by Mark Tufo
sticking point.
“Shoot the ones that are stuck,” I said, hoping that we would create a logjam and
prevent any further attempts.
If they were gaining smarts, they would realize that they could use small sizes to
their advantage; that meant women and children zombies. The woman zombie was flailing
about, trying her best to get in. Between her movements and my nervousness, it took
me three shots to still her. The first had slammed into her shoulder, the second,
went wide right and into a framed reproduction of a Picasso painting. At least I hoped
it was a reproduction. I’d never liked his art, but I was not into indiscriminately destroying invaluable pieces.
The third caught her in the top of her head. She fell against the wall, her head leaving
a bloody stain where she struck. Similar shots rang out around me, with the desired
affect being achieved. I was breathing heavy like I’d just run a marathon. Okay, that’s
a lie. I’d never be able to run a marathon. Let’s go with ‘I was breathing as heavy
as if it was the fourth quarter in the Super Bowl, tie game and a commercial break
came on, and not only did I need to take a world-class piss, I also needed to get
a few beers for my guests and reheat the nacho cheese before the ads were over. Yeah,
that’s better…that’s how heavy I was breathing.
“Seems to have worked,” Tommy said. He was still on the stairs with Tracy.
“Trace, could you see how BT is doing?” I asked. She was all too happy to oblige.
Then what previously would have been the unthinkable began to happen; the zombie woman
began to move…and not of her own volition. She was being dragged from the opening.
“Well that sucks,” Travis said.
I couldn’t have put it any more eloquently. She left a bloody smear as her head dragged
against the wall. Then, the rest of the zombies we had used as an informal barricade
were slowly moved out. In one case, I think the zombies were going for psychological
warfare. They battered and rammed one of their own into the basement, breaking every
substantial bone in its body to do so, the snaps and cracks echoing throughout the
room as we watched. When the heap of zombie remains plopped wetly to the floor, all
of our eyes were riveted to it.
At this point, I would have yielded the basement to the zombies and closed it off,
but we didn’t have that luxury. To give up this room meant we would lose the library.
There was no way to close this section off. It was a wide staircase that led down
to it and no door at the top.
“Shit! Should have thought of this sooner. Look for tools…hammer, pry bar, any strong
piece of steel.” The boys weren’t moving. “Now!” I shouted to get them going. “Upstairs!”
I told them when they started to go deeper into the basement.
“What are you thinking?” Tommy asked.
“I’m thinking that beautiful staircase has to go,” I told him. “It worked for a while
in Little Turtle, it should buy us some time here.”
“We don’t need tools,” he said to me.
I looked at him like he was a vampire. Which I guess he is, so that makes sense. Tommy
came down to the first step and gripped the lip of the first stair. I saw his fingers
whiten and an intense look on his face, and then I heard the groans of ten penny nails
as they began to yield their prize. The wooden step shot up and flipped over a few
times before coming to rest halfway up the stairs.
“That’ll work,” I told him.
The next wave of zombies began to try and find an entrance. It was not lost on me
that most of them were women and a slight man. It was the five-year-old that fell
to the floor that really got my attention though.
“Faster, Tommy,” I said as he looked over his shoulder, horror clearly evident on
his face. The zombie child came closer. Its teeth were not bared; he had almost a
sad expression on his face as if he were asking for my help.
I raised my rifle up—the child’s small head directly in front of my steel sights.
That got him going. His arms came out and hatred squeezed out any semblance of a child
in trouble from his face. I pulled the trigger, the top of his head vaporized in a
spray of blood and skull plate. He skidded to a stop no more than ten feet from me.
I heard three more steps clatter away. That was followed by more bodies hitting the
floor. Two were women and one was a man that I think was the previous world record
holder for oldest living human being. That he was able to stand and start running
at me should have been a sight to behold. Instead, it was just fucking scary as hell.
He looked like a Halloween prop brought to life. Something that shouldn’t be…was.
The rifle jumped in my shoulder as I drew a breath, exhaled, and blew him back to
the hell he had come from. I had a trio of zombie women running towards me and reacquired
a target. The round caught her in the neck, shattering her spinal column, her head
falling forward to her chest and still she came.
“Tommy!” I shouted, to make him aware we were about to become overrun as more bodies
hit the floor. I moved quickly away from the ‘one shot one kill’ philosophy. I sent
the rest of my magazine into the two remaining women. Their bodies danced until I
found the ‘kill’ zones, dropping them hard.
I’d bought enough time to reload. I pressed the magazine release, going old-school.
When I’d first joined the Marines we’d been taught to just press the release and let
the magazine fall where it may and then jam a full one back into the well. By the
time I was getting out, they had realized in a combat situation they were losing tens
of thousands of dollars in ‘lost’ magazines. We were then being shown how to salvage
the spent bullet holder before putting a full one in. It cost us precious seconds
while people were trying to kill us, but hey, anything to save the government a buck
or two. The magazine clacked to the floor, I slammed another home, pulled the charging
handle back and was in business once again.
“Few more seconds,” Tommy told me.
“That’s all we have,” I told him back.
Tommy was straddling the risers, pulling on the wood. I was left to wonder if our
new and improved zombies would be able to do this as well. In fact, when I turned
to see the advancing horde, I realized that more than one was staring intently at
Tommy as if they were learning some new skill.
“Up, Tommy!” I yelled.
The way in which I commanded it gave him no doubt that I did not want to be questioned
or second-guessed. He turned to me once before bounding up the stairs. The six or
so that he’d removed would have to be enough. I destroyed the zombie that had been
so intent on him.
“I could have gotten more,” Tommy said with chagrin as he looked down at the stairs
and his handiwork.
“Most likely, but they were watching you. And not watching you like they wanted to
eat you. Well…that too I suppose, but they were watching you like you were a teacher
and they were rapt students.”
“That’s not good.”
“No, not at all.” I told him.
“Talbot, nice of you to join us,” BT said as he was working on one of the last screws.
“Sorry,
I was getting a pedicure.”
He looked up. “Wouldn’t doubt it.”
“Travis, Justin.” I motioned to the stairs. “Shoot only if they start making headway.”
We had a fair amount of rounds, but I didn’t know when we were really going to need them.
Gary at some point had moved from his chair to a reading couch, he and Henry were
snuggled up tight and somehow still fast asleep. BT shrugged his shoulders when he
saw me looking at them. Tracy was at my side as we watched BT pull the cover off the
box.
“I’ll be damned,” BT said. “How in the hell did your brother carry this?”
“Well, he is Gambo,” Tracy said.
In addition to the two dead batteries, there were what we hoped were two ‘fresh’ ones.
“Extras, he put friggin’ extras in here,” BT said, shaking his head. “I knew it weighed
more than a buck thirty. How does he forget something like that?”
“Just because you’re brilliant doesn’t mean you’re smart,” I said.
BT nodded in agreement.
“Oh bullshit,” Tracy said. “That doesn’t even make sense and BT’s over there agreeing
with you.”
I gave her a cheesy smile. It had seemed like genius when I said it, upon reflection
it began to lose luster.
“At least the crazy bastard used wing nuts to attach the leads,” BT said as he quickly
went to work on replacing the batteries.
“Dad, what about now?” Travis asked. He had his rifle in his shoulder and pointed
down the stairs.
“Yeah, definitely,” I said, not prepared for the explosion of his rifle near to me.
Two zombies had stepped onto the first riser, looking like toddlers attempting their
first steps. The old adage ‘practice makes perfect’ popped in my head. I was not going
to give the remaining one the opportunity. I blew off the bottom of her leg. My thinking
was that, if the zombies could learn, maybe they would know that climbing meant maiming
which in turn meant death. It was a bit much for me to hope, but I did it anyway.
“Dad, you didn’t hit it in the head,” Justin said. “I know, I know, Captain Obvious.
Is there a reason I should know about though?”
“Just testing a theory,” I told him.
The zombie turned herself around on the floor and was now looking up at me. Hatred
burned through her eyes. And hatred implied intelligence. Then she began to pull herself
back towards the stairs. Her hands gripped the riser and she started to pull herself
forward.
“So much for that,” I said as I put a round in her forehead, snapping her head back
violently. A group of zombies was milling about at the bottom. Occasionally one would
get divine inspiration and give the balancing act a go.
“How long before they figure out they can climb?” Travis asked with some trepidation.
“I was thinking the same thing,” I told him.
Where the stairs continued on was about chest to head level high, depending on the
zombie. Not an overly hard climb for someone with dexterity and the know-how. The
speeders had all the dexterity they needed; it was just a matter of getting all their
parts to move in the correct unison.
“BT?”
“I’ve got the new batteries in, but it’s not doing anything and I’m afraid to just
start flipping switches. Looks like a high-tech server room inside this thing.”
“I hate to be Deputy Downer, but I think we’re going to need that thing before the
night is done,” I told him.
“Really?” Tracy asked. I nodded to her.
“These fuckers are going to start pole-vaulting this chasm soon.” On further reflection
I should have maybe kept that thought to myself. Always one to comment first and recant
later, it’s a pretty good thing I never got on Twitter; inserting a hundred and forty
characters into my mouth instantaneously would be bad for my dental work.
“Alright, boys, time to take back the night,” I said.
“Huh?” Travis asked.
“I think it was a line from a movie, sounded good before I said it. We’re going to
take back the basement. I’m sick of waiting for them to figure out a way up here.
Ready?”
Travis shrugged. Justin nodded.
I opened fire, immediately followed by my boys. At this close range, the effects of
the bullets were devastating. Bodies bounced around as they caught our rounds. Books
exploded in a cloud of confetti from errant shots and ricochets. We’d descend a step
or riser every time we dropped a line of zombies. We didn’t give them much of an opportunity
to fill their ranks as we decimated their force.
Within a couple of minutes, we had taken out the twenty or so zombies who had made
it in. It would have been impossible to accurately count the dead given the amount
of body parts that littered the floor. Okay, so impossible might be an over-exaggeration.
How about fucking disturbingly gross? The basement was ours once again, but she was
much like Helen of Troy, now that we had her back we didn’t want her. It smelled like
an old octopus with diarrhea. Stop for a moment and let that sink in. Yeah it was
that bad.
We still didn’t have a way to keep them from coming in. All I’d really bought us was
a moral victory. Those do have their own importance. I was at the bottom step when
I heard the familiar plop of a zombie dropping in.
“Seems these old buildings have leaky windows,” I said to Tommy.
He had come down to survey the damage after I’d sent the boys back up. Why I still
felt the need to protect them from these sights eluded me. They’d seen this and worse
ten times over.
“I can pop off a few more steps,” he said to me.
“I’ll watch your back.”
Tommy jumped down and quickly pried three more steps off. I’d only had to shoot two
approaching zombies. Either they were running out of little ones, or they’d figured
out the futility of this avenue of attack. I reached down and helped Tommy back up,
although I’m certain he didn’t need it.
“Wish I had a flamethrower,” I told him as we sat, our legs dangling into the library
basement, almost without a care in the world like we were “sitting on a dock by the
bay”. (I know, it’s a great song.) “I’d torch these bastards.”
I looked upon the fallen zombies. It was not out of malice I said that, but rather,
it would be easier to see them as they enemy if they were molten shapes as opposed
to the expectant mother to my right, the teenager with braces in front of me, the
business woman in her tattered power suit. They had just been people, not even combatants.
A flamethrower would have been nice.
“Not sure if that’d be a good idea in a library,” Tommy said to me.
“Sure it would. We could pretend we were in Georgia and this was a good old fashioned
book burning.”
“I’m going to talk to Mrs. T. I think it’s time for your meds. For your information
there are no records of book burnings in Georgia.” He rose. “You staying?”
“For a little bit.” I was having a hard time taking my eyes off the young woman who
couldn’t have been much older than my daughter, her stomach was protruding slightly
from a baby bump. She had probably been out shopping for baby stuff when she turned
“Two for the price of one.” I sighed.
Her size and shape reminded me of my daughter. It was only fine lines of fate that
separated the dead woman’s lot in life from my Coley’s. I wanted to cry for the woman