by Mark Tufo
BT moved quickly. “Dome light still works; we might be in luck.”
“Yeah, this is luck.” I said, walking over to the bug. It was a stick. I placed the car in neutral, pumped the gas, depressed the clutch, and turned the key. A slow sluggish whirring relented to a faster power generation, and finally, German engineering kicked in and the car started. And maybe lady luck was looking out for us, at least a little; the tank was nearly full.
“Get in. I need to find some Lysol right quick.” Can’t even begin to relate to you how I had to pretend my right hand was dead to me. There were so many times I wanted to rub the corner of my eye or perhaps scratch an itch, and I needed to do everything with my left. As far as my right was concerned, I was fairly certain it now housed the plague, and I would not spread the disease any further. Whatever guiding force we had for the day was still keeping watch. We hadn’t gone more than three blocks from where we picked up our new ride when we found a small mom-and-pop convenience store. The kind that held on by the skin of their teeth as the Seven Elevens of the world pushed them into the dirt, much like Blockbuster had done to every other video rental place.
“You’re going to stop?” Ron asked after I had already pulled up alongside the building.
“Mike you want me to come with you or….” BT nodded his head over to Ron.
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.” Sure, I could have used BT to watch my back, but if anything happened in there, I, at least, had my wits about me enough to do something. Ron right now looked like he could get rolled by a gang of peace-loving Hare Krishnas. Are they still around? Whatever. I got out of the car and made sure a round was chambered and my selector switch was on fire then headed for the front door. I had not been expecting what I saw when I cautiously poked my head in. The store was pristine, as if this were a time capsule of how things had been before the zombies came.
It was possible someone had truly lost their fucking mind and was attempting to keep one small facet of his or her life as normal as possible. Unlikely, but possible. Then I got my answer in the cloying stench of death. There were zombies in here. The aisle I wanted was past the rows of cupcakes and chips, bread, automotive goods, and candy. I could see the baby blue color of a diaper package, and I knew right next to that would be a blissful box of wipes. I needed those fucking wipes bad, like a heroin addict needs a fix, like a fat kid needs a cupcake, like a skinny person needs a salad, like a white girl needs a pumpkin spice latte. I needed those fucking wipes, and I was going to risk everything for them. I stepped all the way in. Sunlight streamed through the windows, bathing the store in a fair amount of light. Nothing moved except the lazy swirl of dust. The only thing out of place was a little bell on the floor. I imagine that had been used to notify the owner that someone had entered.
I was past the first aisle, still no blood, no bullet casings, no bullet holes, no bodies, no zombies, just rows and rows of merchandise. If I hadn’t been so fixated on those damn baby cloths, I would have started shoving shit in my many cargo pockets. I had my rifle up to my shoulder and scanned every place as rapidly as I could, just kept coming up empty. I should have been feeling more relieved, but, if anything, it was starting to make me feel more apprehensive. It was like that build up in a horror movie. You know something is going to jump out—and would they just hurry up and get it over with so you don’t choke on your damn popcorn in front of your date. My eyes were beginning to involuntarily water from the smell. Although in reality it’s hard to make your eyes water voluntarily, unless you’re an actor. More superfluous words I had not yet written down today. At some point, I’d pulled my shirt over my nose—about as effective as you think it would be. Pretty sure cotton was never supposed to filter out the stench of death.
I shoved a box of the wet wipes into my pocket. If I didn’t feel like my heart was going to jump up and through my throat, I would have ripped open the package and cleaned up there. I began to back up slowly, once again doing my high-speed scanning. This time, I started randomly grabbing things, without really looking, and putting them in my pockets. I’d tried shoving a box of high-fiber cereal in, and it wouldn’t fit. I carefully placed it back.
“What are you doing, Talbot?” I literally had to ask myself what I was doing. My backwards progress to safety was halted, and I was once again moving forward. “You cannot really be doing this, can you?” How can one possibly be asking himself a question and simultaneously ignoring himself? Does that qualify as insanity? Was I losing an argument with myself? I think I’d kept it together longer than most would during these types and multitudes of stress. Apparently, even crazy has a finite quantity. You dip into the well too much, and you come up insane. Is that even possible? My world would have been much better off if my mother had decided she did not want to take her accidental pregnancy with me to term. I would have been a happy-go-lucky non-committed soul running around Heaven, oblivious to all the pain and suffering, which was all the world could ever offer.
Unlike the store proper, the storage room was dark, not completely though, no matter how much I would soon wish it were. Two windows high up offered enough light for me to see the horrors within. As clean and pristine as the outside store had been, the storeroom was the polar opposite. At first, I mistakenly thought that the room had been painted a deep red hue. That was not the case; it was coated in the arterial spray of blood from countless victims. Gnawed bones littered the floor, making it impossible to walk through without stepping on them.
Not that I would have. A red sticky mass, roughly an inch and a half thick, had congealed on the floor like an oversized vat of holiday Jell-O had spilled. That it was the accumulated viscera of innumerable people was not completely lost on me, though I wish that it had been as well. I saw what I saw, and I’ll never be able to un-see it. My eyes were taking in things my brain could not register fast enough. I just started instinctually firing. Best to let someone else sort them out. A small stasis pile, that was bad, as bad as they always are, was off to my left. But certainly, not the worst of it; not by a long shot. A group of ten zombies were keeping watch. Yup, that’s what I said. Keeping watch over a trio of humans, or at least a reasonable facsimile of what humans used to look like.
The three people were nude, which mattered little as they were covered in enough layers of grime and detritus as to still be clothed. The man and the woman were as malnourished as I had ever seen two living people. The child in the woman’s arms had died—not too long ago, from the looks of him. She’d done her best to keep him somewhat clean during whatever had happened. My quick take on it was that the zombies had trapped a decent number of people in this room and had devoured them at their leisure, holding on to the people like stored food products to only be eaten in times of need. When they’d begun to run low on stores, the majority had chosen to go to sleep while those still awake finished off what was left.
The rifle chattered in my hands as I just kept firing. The zombies had spun and were coming at me. I’d taken down six of them before I had to go back out the way I’d come. The stasis pile shifted as they awoke to face this new threat and potential new food source. BT was in the front door before the storeroom door could completely close.
“Tell me, Mike!” he shouted, scanning for threats, approaching me at a decent clip but always aware, the rifle looking like a toy up against his shoulder.
“Zombies … holding prisoners.” I gulped.
He didn’t say anything. If he had questions, he would save them for later, as the knob to the storeroom twisted and nightmares came free. Between the two of us, we were able to push them back with a curtain of lead. A zombie that had fallen and was keeping the door from shutting properly was yanked back inside. We were once again left in the relatively unscathed store, although it now was not as pristine as it had been.
“What the fuck, Mike?” He had not pulled his gun down yet. “We need to get out of here.”
“There are people in there.”
“In there? Are you sure?
” We heard screams as if to punctuate his question. First, the high-pitched shriek of a woman, and then, the much deeper cries of a man. “We need to get them!” He moved forward.
“It’s too late.” Even when I walked into the store, it had been too late. Their vacant eyes as they stared up at me had told me all I needed to know. They’d checked out from this life a while back, perhaps with the loss of their son. Maybe even longer. “It’s a trap, they’re killing them hoping we’ll go in and help.”
“We gotta go then.” BT lightly tapped my shoulder, and we tactically withdrew. Ron was sitting in the driver’s seat. We jumped in, and he sped off, I mean as fast as a bug will go, anyway. I looked back, and three zombies were outside the door watching our departure.
“What’s going on?” Ron kept looking in the rearview mirror at me. I was furiously wiping my hands and face with the baby wipes. If I could have peeled back my skull and wiped my brain clean, I would have done that as well.
I wasn’t sure at first, not completely anyway, and then it sprung on me. Fitting, it should happen that way. I let them know what I was thinking. “The store, the fucking store was a trap. A human lure.”
“Are you kidding?” Ron kept glancing up in the mirror, maybe to see if I was indeed crazy or had slipped over the edge.
“They were holding three people hostage when I went in the backroom, had them backed up against the wall. Not fattening them up before the slaughter, but definitely waiting to butcher and eat them. Had to have already done it to dozens, if not a hundred or more, people.”
“You said you found them? Why didn’t they find you then?” I understood why Ron was questioning me. None of us wanted to believe the zombies were capable of this level of sophistication.
I didn’t know why at first. Why make a trap if you weren’t going to use it? “The bell, the fucking bell.” I said aloud when the image came back to me.
“Things ringing in your head Mike?” BT asked.
“You know those little notification bells they have?”
He nodded.
“It was on the floor. Their signal was broken, and either they didn’t know it or they didn’t know how to fix it.”
“Saved by the bell.” BT said.
“Did you really just say that?”
He smiled a little when he realized what he’d said. “Those poor fucking people.” What little mirth he had quickly ran away as it was faced with the horror that had been that store. “We can’t leave that place there.”
I hadn’t gotten to that reasoning and not sure if I ever would. I was pretty much happy that I’d left with my life and that of BT’s. Does that make me narcissistic?
“Any ideas?” I asked, pretty much hoping he wouldn’t have any. I didn’t want to go back, ever. The chances I would be able to forget the utter futility I saw in those two faces was slim; to go back would just reinforce the memory.
“Fire? We could burn the place.” Ron offered.
“It was made of cinder block, and I don’t think we can go back in without a substantial fight. Had to have been at least fifty or sixty zombies stacked up.”
“I’ve got an idea.” BT had a strange look in his eyes.
“Is this an idea like a ‘Mike idea’ or a real idea?” I prodded him.
“Those asses that shot a rocket at us.”
“What about them?” I did not like where this was going.
“I bet they have more rockets.”
“Good for them,” I told him.
“We need those rockets.”
“Listen, it was all kind of funny when we were talking about how being around me could make you catch crazy, but that’s all it was … talk I mean. You want to hunt down some murderous men, steal their shit so we can come back here and blow up a zombie hive?”
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
“No,” I blurted out.
“Who the fuck made you boss?”
He’d gone from thinking in the abstract to looking like he was going to put me in traction in a matter of a second or two.
“BT, that is a lot more risk than I’m thinking we should put ourselves into.” It was Ron who decided now might be a good time to interject.
“You saw them, Mike.” BT had softened. “You said you saw a woman holding her kid, nobody, fucking nobody should ever have to go through that. We have a chance to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and I say we take it.”
“Having a chance would imply that we have the necessary weaponry with us. We don’t; you want to hunt and kill men so we can hunt and kill zombies.”
“How old do you think that kid was, Mike? Tell me. What if it happens again? That’s on you.”
It wasn’t really. There’s no way I could be held accountable, but that wouldn’t stop me from pondering the thought constantly, and most likely while I tried to sleep. I would forever think of some hapless family wandering into that store only to become a human MRE.
I stuck my finger up. “Don’t you ever fucking say my plans are for shit again. Do you understand me?”
“We’re doing this? You’re seriously thinking about doing this?” Ron asked. “Those guys are long gone by now.”
“Doubtful, they probably live relatively close by, and these are their hunting grounds. So, in reality, we’ll be getting rid of two human traps today. Fantastic.”
“Good to have you back, Mike.” BT beamed.
“Fuck this, Mike,” Ron said. “This is insane. You said so yourself, not ten seconds ago. We just need to get Erin and get the hell back home.”
“You know what’s insane, big brother?”
He didn’t answer.
“Telling that man, ‘no.’”
“That’s what I’m talking about.” BT said.
“Even if I wasn’t afraid, he’d twist me in two. He’s right. We’d be doing the right thing and saving who knows how many people. We owe it—”
“To who, who the fuck do we owe it to?” Ron was getting angry.
I looked at Ron. My older brother had been delivered a hard lesson this day, and it wasn’t going to get any easier.
“We owe it to the next little kid, the next old lady, the next middle-aged man. We owe it to any potential survivor. What if by not doing this, those men or zombies kill the person that has a cure for all this shit?”
“That’s a huge ‘what if,’ Mike. We could play that game all day. How about I go now. What if we get killed today doing this shit? What do you think happens to those we love back home?”
“He plays dirty,” BT said to me.
“He never did like to lose,” I said. “We very much could die today, no doubt, but not for a minute do I think those people back home would pack it in. Sure, that’s a shitty argument, I know, I know, but this is something we need to do.”
Ron let his head touch the steering wheel. “What do we need to do?”
“Didn’t think you’d come around to it that quick.” BT smiled as he clapped Ron on the shoulder. “I’ve got to remember you have Talbot blood running through you though.”
“Get back on the highway. I want you to go northbound but on the southbound lanes.” I said. Ron looked at me in a way I’d become all too familiar with, like perhaps I buttered my toast on the sides. “I know what I’m doing. The idiots traveled north on the northbound lanes.”
“At least they have that going for them.” Ron replied confirming my earlier suspicion of what he thought of me.
“We’re going to have to drive until we see where they’ve set up shop. Then we need to turn around. If we’re on the opposite side of the highway, the chance that they hop in their truck and pursue will be a lot less because it will be that much more difficult to chase us.”
“Shit, that’s not bad for you,” BT said as he reloaded his magazine.
We weren’t on the road for ten minutes when we saw them up ahead. Ron stopped the car so quickly I nearly ended up on the gearshift. That’s what I got for sitting in the middle of the back seat.
&n
bsp; “What do I do?” he almost bellowed.
“Turn the fuck around.”
“Won’t that look suspicious?”
“So does sitting here. Turn around before they wonder what the hell we’re doing.” I could just barely make one of them out shielding his eyes to the sun to get a better look. He was motioning for something inside their decoy truck. I had a gut feeling it was binoculars. “Ron, get the fuck moving. If he realizes it’s us, they will come chasing.”
Ron ground the gears as we got moving. I turned and kept an eye on the truck. By the time we were out of sight, I had no indication that they were following.
“Now what?” Ron and BT were looking at me. I laid out my plan such as it was. Not sure which of them said “absolutely not” first.
“This is the best way. Someone needs to stay with the car as a diversion, and I need fast back-up. I’ll take a radio and tell you when I’m in position.”
Ron came to my way of thinking, finally. BT looked at me suspiciously, like he could smell around the edges of my lie.
We’d been standing outside the car. I was leaning down, checking the strap on my knife, Ron was pacing back and forth nervously.
BT gripped my forearm. “You be careful,” he hissed. It was a strange mixture between a warning and plea.
“Always, man.”
“Before, I just thought maybe you were lying. Now, I know you are. What gives?”
“It’s just like we planned.” He kept looking me straight in the eye, hoping I would look away and finally crack. When he realized I wouldn’t, or there was a small possibility he was wrong, he wished me luck. “See you soon.”
I got back to the highway and quickly crossed all the lanes to get back to the tree line. I jogged for about ten minutes until I could see the truck up ahead. The men were talking but didn’t seem too particularly concerned about anything. Now, it was time to go in the woods, only about fifteen feet, far enough they couldn’t see me but close enough that the brush wasn’t overly thick. I had time to think while I slowed my approach. I would have much rather had BT with me. The man was an incredible ally to have in almost any situation that didn’t involve diplomacy. Not that this scenario required it, but killing men affected BT in ways even he didn’t understand. He’d do it because it was necessary, but it was poking holes in his soul. I knew because I was watching. Since I was devoid of that particular trait, I wanted to do my best to spare him. I’d like to say it was a completely altruistic action; it wasn’t. Sure, some of it was for his benefit; a good portion was for me.