by Mark Tufo
My wife’s face dropped; the fear in her eyes made her forget the rancid excrement I was leaving on her carpet. The thump against the front door steeled her resolve. She moved back from the abyss she was heading toward.
“He’s at work,” she answered with a sob. Work was Wal-Mart, and it was exactly 3.7 miles from our house. I knew because on most days I drove his ass to and from. He didn’t have his license yet, refer back to the part about his prioritizing skills.
“Travis, how’s it coming with the guns?” I hollered up the stairs.
“Almost done, Dad,” came his reply.
The front door shuddered again, but it wasn’t going to give anytime soon. I slipped the dead bolt in place anyway. “I’m going to get some clothes on.” I grabbed my wife’s shoulders and swung her towards me so she was staring at me. “We’re going to get him,” I added reassuringly.
She nodded in agreement and muttered the same words she said on our wedding day as part of her vows: “Uh huh.”
“Hon.” I held her firm. “Get some food together.” She looked at me questioningly. “We’re going to get Justin and then, I hope, come back home. But I want to be prepared. Go get the boxes of MRE’s.” (The military had developed these Meals Ready to Eat; they taste like dirt but all the caloric intake one needs to fend off the undead. Or does the word 'undead' refer to vampires? Ok, ok, so the zombies would be the 'living' dead, is that better?) “Hon, you’ve got to come back from Traceyville.” We sometimes joked when my wife had a blonde moment or just lapsed out of our reality into her own made up one. Life came back into her eyes, and just like that she was back. She had a mission: saving one of her offspring. Don’t ever get between a mother and her young.
“I’m gonna get some clothes on and then we’re going, okay?” I questioned.
I was a little worried about her but I didn’t need to be; she was back and nothing was going to deter her…unless of course the damn lights went out. The TV announcer was now telling us we should stay in our homes. 'No screaming eagle shit!' I was about to tell her, when she was cut off in mid-sentence as the electricity failed. Tracy latched on to me. The sudden quiet was broken only by the occasional thumping on our front door. 'Those Girl Scouts are persistent,' kept flashing across my brain plate. Hey, nobody said I didn’t go to Mikeyville occasionally.
“Dad?” Travis half-moaned from upstairs. I snapped back, if not for me then for him.
“I’m here bud, give me two seconds. I'm going to get some candles and a flashlight.” I’d been meaning to get that circuit breaker fixed, but I wouldn’t be going to Home Depot tonight.
“Umm, could you hurry?” he asked. I could hear the panic welling up in him.
There’s something to be said about being a survivalist. Most people think we’re nuts. Hell, I think that and I’m one of them. We’re always preparing for what we think is an eventuality, Doomsday, the end of the world, invasions from another planet, when the odds say the worst that might happen is an errant tornado. But one thing about always preparing for the worst, is that, well, we’re always prepared. 'Isn't that the Boy Scout motto?' I thought to myself. I hauled myself back from Mikeyville again and turned back to my troops.
“Travis, next to the left hand side of the gun safe, on the wall near the floor, you should see a small light. That’s a flashlight, grab it and I’ll be right up. I want to get your mother some light too.”
“Got it!” he answered triumphantly. I could hear the tremor in his voice relax as I saw the beam of light cut a swath down the staircase.
I padded upstairs with my own candle. Tracy went to the basement to grab the grub. On the bed Travis had all the weapons laid out, locked and loaded. There was the M-16, then my 'elephant killer,' the 30 aught 6. Oh, stop your PETA protests, I already told you I don’t hunt. I continued my visual inventory: Two shotguns, a .22 caliber rifle and a pistol, my .357 Magnum, my 9mm Glock and my .17 caliber lever action rifle. I had over a thousand rounds for each weapon and all I could think to myself was, 'I should have bought more.' Survivalism is addictive. You can never have too much ammo.
The front door thumped again. “BITCH!” I said as I grabbed the .357 off the bed. I ran downstairs and peeked through the spy hole, thankful that there was a full moon tonight, although was I? Was that the reason the dead were walking around? I didn't know. All I could see was the douche bag that was still licking my peephole, and that still sounded a little disturbing, even to me.
I held the Magnum up to the eye slot and pulled the trigger. The explosion was deafening in our quiet home. I looked through the now gaping hole in my front door. Sir Licks-A-Lot was dead for the second time around, and he was not going to be getting back up any time soon. He lay on his side on my front porch; the back of his head was just gone. The bullet had entered his mouth and had torn away most of his teeth and that god-awful tongue. There was some blood and a little gristle hanging out the back of his melon but that was it. His compadres did not even take note of his passing, but the noise sure got their attention. I hastily opened the front door and kicked Sir Licks' foot out of the way so I could shut the security door. Even though the glass pane was gone, the door would still afford some much needed protection against the zombies' unwelcome advances.
The noise of the gun might have the natives restless, but the sight of fresh meat stirred them into a frenzy. The shuffling turned into an ambling and the ambling turned into a slow trot, eh maybe more like a power walk. Okay, they weren’t going to break any land speed records, but this wasn’t the slow shuffle the visionary George R. Romero envisioned in his documentaries.
I had just kicked the zombie's dead... undead... redead? foot out of the way and shut the door, much more easily engaging the lock this time around, when the first of my uninvited guests slammed up against the metal casing; the bars were intact, but that did nothing to stop the impact of the foul odor that he gave off. I slammed the front door shut, and only then realized I had just killed my first zombie and I was buck naked.
CHAPTER 2
Journal Entry - 2
On hearing the shot, Travis had run halfway down the stairs, 12 gauge at the ready (bless his heart). “Everything all right Dad?”
“Everything’s cool, finish packing up,” came my measured response.
Tracy yelled from the bottom of the cellar stairs. “What’s going on?”
I don’t know why I didn’t tell her the truth. “Accidental discharge,” I answered.
“Be careful, that’s what you said the night Nicole was conceived, and look how that turned out,” she said plainly.
‘Are you kidding me?’ I thought. 'How does she remember these things? Yeah we were young when Nicole was born, and I might have been a little overeager in bed, but I’m sure I didn’t say "accidental discharge" it was probably more like "uh..uh..uh.. aahhh."
I was still a little shaken from the killing. Sure it was a zombie, but at one time he was a normal air breathing, hamburger munching individual. I tried my best not to think of the person he had been, but more of the monster he had become. There would be time later to ruminate. Now, however was the time for action and Justin needed our help. I went upstairs. Travis had begun to bring the weapons and the ammo boxes downstairs. The fear was wiped off his face now that he had a purpose and protection. I grabbed the first shirt I got my hands on. It was an old Widespread Panic concert t-shirt, one of my favorites. I no sooner pulled it over my head and I froze. The feeling of the collar scraping and tugging against the dirt and dried soap on my neckline made me want to jump out of my skin. It was akin to someone dragging their fingernails down a chalkboard, with a megaphone for amplification. I almost couldn’t move, I was a heartbeat and a half from saying ‘FUCK IT!’ and pulling the t-shirt off and hopping in the shower real quick, but I knew every second counted getting to Justin.
“Damn!” I bellowed as I pulled my arms through the sleeves, wincing every time the fabric scraped against me. If I had known what kind of shape Justin was in alre
ady, I would’ve just taken the shower.
As I was coming down the stairs Tracy looked up, holding her cell phone to her ear. “I can’t get a hold of Nicole, the line is just busy,” she stated. Nicole was our oldest child and by far and away my favorite daughter (and our only daughter). She now lived in the city of Lakewood (having lost her job in Breckenridge) with a man I hoped would eventually become part of the family, Brendon Van Hutchinson. Our family was quirky and he fit in just right. I was hoping that my wife would have been able to get through to Nicole. It would have been one less worry on my head. From where we lived, Lakewood was about eighteen miles away. I had no illusions that getting to Wal-Mart was going to be easy. Getting to Lakewood seemed a logistical nightmare.
“Hon, they live on the third floor and Brendon has a pistol and a shotgun, their place is much more defendable than ours,” I said, not sure whether I was trying to make her or myself feel better. She nodded in agreement, but it didn’t seem to make her feel any better. The crowd at the front of our house had swelled to about fifty. I wasn’t going to sit at the window and get an accurate count. I would love to have a kegger with this many people, I’d make a fortune. Even I had to marvel sometimes at how my brain makes some of its connections.
“Dad, the car's packed,” Travis made known.
“You got the food too?” I asked. He just looked at me in outraged disgust like any normal teenager would. “All right,” I answered. “I was just making sure.”
Henry had finally managed to pull himself off his bed. All the activity had aroused his curiosity level, which usually isn’t all that high unless it involves a meaty bone treat.
Our townhome came with an enclosed two car garage. However, it was a detached garage, which was no big deal considering that it was on the far end of our backyard, which put it exactly ten feet away. There was still some moderate shuffling signs beyond the gate but it was nothing like the wholesale special going on in the front. I was tempted to climb on the gate and take a peek over but I couldn’t see the upside to it. Henry had followed me out and he took a moment to sniff at his freshly disturbed pile, he then started sniffing my crap-covered foot. He was able to put two and two together pretty quickly. He snorted at me as if to say, ‘Dad, how could you mess with my masterpiece?’
I slammed my fist up against the circuit breaker mounted to the wall of the garage. I think I hadn’t fixed this yet because I always felt like Fonzi from Happy Days turning on the Jukebox. Power surged back on. Had I been more vigilant, I would have noticed that the entire complex had been in the dark and the lights coming on had more to do with Jed (who you’ll meet later) than with my smooth moves. I went back in the house to shut the nonessentials off, including the now static-laced television, and headed back to the garage. I picked Henry up and placed him in the rear of my wife’s Jeep Liberty with the ammo. He wasn’t happy about sharing his bed; he snorted one more time before he laid down. My wife came out last, remembering to bring the eight-pack of PowerAde we had in the fridge. She stopped short at the garage door.
“Why are we taking my car?” she asked with a slight edge of attitude.
“It’ll fit more stuff,” I lied. Well, I mean not really, her car is bigger than my Jeep Wrangler, but that wasn’t the only reason. I loved my car, I’d had it for a little over ten years and it was almost as cherry as the day it had rolled off the line, and I’d be damned if some brain eating, dead zombies were going to get their gooey parts all over it.
I hadn’t convinced her with my half-truth; she still stood glaring at me from the doorway. “Plus Hon, mine is a stick, there’s no way I can shoot and shift gears at the same time.” Now that was an out and out lie, I can’t tell you how many 4-wheel drive excursions I’ve gone on with my rifle hanging out the window. There were plenty of dead road signs to attest to my accuracy. I know she would have argued some more and eventually won, but the time it would have taken to shift everything over was precious moments more that it was going to take to get to Justin.
“Fine,” she muttered. “I’ll remember this.” And I knew she would, she remembered stuff from when we were dating. If we were in the heat of a battle and she felt like she was in danger of losing, she would reach way back in time and pull one of those wonderful nuggets (sarcasm) out from nowhere and hurl it at me. I mean, at that point all you can do is just stare dumbfounded and say, ‘Really? You’re bringing that up now? How on God’s green earth could I have known your aunt was a lesbian?’
And just like that, the tides of the battle would have shifted. I might not hear about the car until we were in a retirement home. But you can bet that if they were going to give me the better model wheelchair she was going to use this as ammunition to nix that.
She moved to push the garage door opener, when I half lunged to her. “Please don’t do that,” I pleaded.
“Oh right!” she answered. (God, it must be so awesome to just forget sometimes. But I wasn’t going to say anything. I was already in hot water about the car.)
She got in to the shotgun seat, although Travis was already in the passenger seat behind her with the window rolled down and the shotgun hanging out, so I guess technically he was in the shotgun seat. I started the car before I hit the garage remote. Tracy rolled her window down.
I couldn’t hold my tongue. “Really?” I asked as I looked at her.
“What?” she replied. “It’s stuffy in here, and you stink.”
“Come back,” I motioned dramatically. “Please come back from wherever you’ve gone. Both of you need to roll up your windows, at least until we get moving.” I got another ‘fine’ out of Tracy, and Travis seemed a little pissed that I was taking his fun away.
The garage door rattled open. I couldn’t see anything right away because of the disparity between the brightness in the garage and the gloom that was our back alleyway, but the thud that hit our rear end as I backed out was obvious. I was a breath away from opening my door and seeing what I had hit when my neighbor smeared up against my window. It’s a good thing I had Henry shit on my foot. It masked what I let go of in my pants. My neighbor from across the alleyway was a decent person in a bull-dykeish way. Don’t get me wrong, I liked her immensely, I just always felt like she was sizing me up for an arm wrestling competition and I would have put my money on her. She owned a Ford pick-up truck, and wore more plaid and wife beater t-shirts than your average trailer park resident. She sported a mullet, which hadn’t been seen in these parts since 1984. She also owned more tools than I did and I ran a Handyman business on the side. You get the general picture.
The thing that pressed up against my car was no longer Jo(e?). She left a trail of pus and guts all across my side of the car, and slimy green pustules burst from her cheek. I swore a maggot crawled out, but by then I had had enough. I hit the accelerator hard enough to almost put my car through her garage door on the opposite side of the causeway. The thing that I had initially hit dragged itself over to my tool shelves and began to pull itself up. I wanted to get out of the car and kill those two but more zombies began to pile into both ends of the alleyway. I had no wish to see how many I could run over before the car stalled so I hit the remote and watched the garage door begin its slow descent, only then realizing that when we got home we were going to have two zombies in our garage to welcome us back. ‘Great!’ (sarcasm again.)
CHAPTER 3
Journal Entry - 3
I was able to get out of the alley before the majority of the zombies could begin to block us in. I winced when I sideswiped one, not because I had hit something but because I knew from the force of the impact I had just put a dent in my wife’s car. I didn’t even look over towards her, but the right side of my face was melting from the glare that was directed at it. There were fewer cars on the road than I would have expected for 8 o’clock on a Thursday night, but that was more than made up for by the sheer number of zombies. Most were just milling about looking for something or should I say ‘somebody’ to eat. Every few hundred feet
or so there would be a cluster of ten or so tearing something apart. You and I both know what they were tearing apart but luckily my brain had enough protective competence to mask over that small insignificant fact.
“Oh Jesus,” my wife muttered as we passed a small cluster, just ravaging some poor soul. I can tell you right now these variants on the traditional zombies weren’t just interested in the brains of their victims. I saw one of the zombies look up from his ‘meal’ with what appeared to be a thigh muscle hanging out of its putrid maw. “I think I’m going to be sick,” Tracy continued.
“Then roll down your window. Travis you too, if anything gets too close just shoot, just make sure it’s dead first,” I suggested. Travis looked at me questioningly. “You know what I mean,” I clarified. “Just don’t kill something that’s still alive.” Yeah, I made about as much sense as a Yankee’s fan visiting Fenway Park.
Most of the cars that were on the road weren’t moving; they had been abandoned. I had to keep my speed down to avoid the cars, the zombies, and the occasional victim-to-be.
“Shouldn’t we help them?” my wife asked as she pulled her head back into the car, already looking better now that she'd emptied her stomach. I motioned that she had a little something on the side of her face. She lifted her hand to remove the offending detritus.