I thought we might need to make use of it.
It turns out I was right.
“Can I, Tripp?” Bullseye begged. “Can I? Now?”
I glanced over at Private Fillerman. He motioned for the pilot to come and stand where Diana and Dr. Marks were on the ground, surrounded by the rest of us. Dr. Marks’s face was pasty-white. Diana’s looked as hard as a rock. I bet if she had any words left to say, they would have tasted like gravel coming out of her mouth.
Every part of me wanted to send the two of them flying over the edge of the library, but that just wasn’t how I rolled—not before, and not even now in this weird, new poxer-filled world.
I folded my arms over my chest. “Bullseye, what have I always told you about guns?”
“We don’t kill people,” he said.
“That’s right.” I smiled.
“So can I?” he begged.
“Safety first,” I told him, and with that, Private Fillerman ordered Diana and Dr. Marks to get up and follow the pilot across the rooftop. We all gathered with them as far away from the helicopter as possible.
“Now?” Bullseye whined.
I shrugged and nodded my head. “Sure.”
Without even blinking, Bullseye shouldered the bazooka like a pro, turned and leveled it at the helicopter and pressed the trigger.
The explosion was spectacular. If we were up on Mount Sugarloaf we would have seen the fireball for sure. The whole flying machine burst into a blinding fire then unceremoniously tipped off the edge of the roof of the library and disappeared into the night.
Bullseye whooped and clapped his hands together. I hadn’t seen him this happy in, well, ever. At some point, we were going to have to have another serious talk about firearms, but now was not the time.
Diana, Dr. Marks and the pilot were speechless, or almost speechless. They were on a rooftop in the middle of a University, burning silly with poxers, and now they had no means of flying away.
“Is that all you have?” seethed Diana. “It that it?”
“Not exactly,” I said. I didn’t need to tell her that we had disabled her entire network. I didn’t need to tell her that all her files were being deleted by Trudy Aiken or that viruses were being unleashed just like Necropoxy was unleashed on the world. I didn’t even need to tell her that maybe she was going to have to figure things out like the rest of us, or die trying.
Instead, my friends and I parted and ten-year-old Sanjay Patel stepped forward—the autistic savant with no place in Diana’s vision, who helped bring an end to all this madness. He was holding Poopy Puppy hanging at his side and had Andrew on his shoulder.
Sanjay held out his hand. “Shoelaces, please,” he said as Andrew stared at the three of them with his beautiful beady eyes. “Poopy Puppy says so.”
59
MAYBE IT WAS MEAN.
Maybe they deserved it.
In the end, we left Diana Radcliffe, Dr. Marks and their pilot up on the roof of the University library for three days.
We gave them a pop-up tent from Walmart, sleeping bags, and hand warmers—the kind that are wrapped in orange plastic and come in boxes of twenty-four. We also gave them canned tuna fish and peanut butter because we all decided that was about the grossest combination we could imagine. Hey, if they were hungry enough they would eat. If they weren’t, oh well.
Seriously. Not my problem.
During those three days we didn’t see another helicopter anywhere, and trust me, we watched the skies.
Also, during those three days, Trudy Aiken with Sanjay’s help dug deep into the files they found on Diana Radcliffe’s network and simply deleted everything they could find. There were shared files and loads of directories that had their own piles of files.
They were replaced with virus-filled files that were designed to wreak havoc when opened.
I loved it. Nothing was immune.
Meanwhile, my parents and the rest of the adults set up camp on the first floor of the library and enjoyed a well-deserved stress-rest from the chaos of the previous few weeks.
As far as Freaky Big Bird was concerned, I do really think Necropoxy changed her, but in a good way. She refused to let any of the non- immune go outside the front door of the library without her and her hockey stick. The new improved Felice was definitely well received.
“That cuckoo lady is turning out to be a good egg,” Dorcas said to me at one point, while we sat alone in the stairwell so she could smoke.
“Freaky Big Bird?” I asked, and she snorted.
“Great name,” she said as we watched the smoke from her cigarette curl up and away. “If that’s what you call Felice, I can only guess what you call me.”
“We call you Dorcas,” I said. “Except for Bullseye. He calls you ‘Old Lady.’” I can’t lie. I was sort of miffed about that. She was my ‘old lady,’ not his. I didn’t care how much they got a chance to know each other when they went off into the night to steal a bazooka from a plastic god at the Peace Pagoda.
“That piss you off?” she asked me.
I sat there with my shoulders slumped. “Maybe.”
She took another drag from her cigarette. “Love you, too,” she croaked and that’s all there was to it.
On that last day, when Trudy Aiken and Sanjay descended the twenty-two flights of stairs from the computer lab and announced to everyone what they had done, cheering filled the air.
Aunt Ella, Nedra, my mom, and some of the others gave Trudy huge hugs while my dad showed Sanjay how to high-five. Then we all slapped his palm in appreciation while Newfie and Whitby yipped and jumped around and Andrew cawed.
I think all the fanfare might have been too much for Sanjay, but he was learning to deal with it. He would never be like the rest of us, but that was okay. At least he would ‘be,’ which is better than I can say for most of the rest of the world.
Right before we decided to leave the University behind, I stole away to a dark corner between the stacks with Prianka. We sat face to face with our backs leaning up against books.
“So now what?” I asked her.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I sort of, you know, saved the world,” I said. “It’s going to be hard to top that and I don’t want you to get bored with me.”
Even in the gloom I could tell that she rolled her eyes. “You know that there’s no ‘I’ in ‘we’,” she said. “But there’s definitely an ‘I’ in ‘badirchand.’”
“Nice,” I said.
She leaned forward so her face was close enough to kiss. “Yes,” she said. “You are.” Then we did kiss, and for a really long time until Trina and Jimmy found us and told us that it was time.
The adults gathered around the entrance to the stairs, along with the dogs and my friends. My mother hugged me, and my father shook my hand. Then Trina and I, alone, made that long, lonely trek all the way up to the top of the library, opened the metal door, and stepped out onto the gravel.
It was drizzling out, but the wet only felt good on my face.
Diana Radcliffe, a little worse for wear, Dr. Marks, and the pilot were sharing a can of tuna fish, scooping out the albacore flakes with their fingers.
The pilot immediately stood up. Diane and Dr. Marks just stared at me with hate in their eyes, way more lethal than Prianka could ever muster.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
“And are we to be left to die?” she snarled, with such acid in her voice that I would have been happy for her to choke on it.
“No,” said Trina. “The door’s open.”
“You’re letting us go?” asked Dr. Marks.
I shrugged. “We’re giving you a fighting chance—again—just like everyone else in the world.”
“How decent of you,” Diana said, w
ith her glasses half down her nose and her preppy, little page boy haircut deflated and glued to her forehead.
“What about me?” asked the pilot.
Trina and I looked at each other. After a moment I licked my lips, turned back to him and said, “Whose side are you on?”
He didn’t bat an eye. “The side where I don’t have to take crazy orders from crazy people anymore,” he said.
That worked for me. “Fine. Do you want to come with us?”
“You bet I do,” he said and practically jumped away from Diana and Dr. Marks with such relief on his face that I thought he might cry.
As we turned to leave, Diana called out after me. “You destroyed the world, Tripp Light.”
“No I didn’t,” I said without turning around. “I saved it.”
“You keep telling yourself that,” she said.
I stopped and turned around. “You know what? I didn’t save the world. A fat lady, an eighty year-old chain-smoker, a gay electrician, a boy with autism, another in a wheelchair, a twelve-year-old sharpshooter, and a whole bunch of others who you would probably deem to be unworthy saved the world.”
“Defectives,” she sneered. “The whole lot.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But we’re the ones who make up this planet, not people like you. You’re the defective one and I pity you.”
That last remark struck home.
“I don’t want your pity,” she growled.
“Okie dokie,” I said lightning quick, then turned and left with Trina and the pilot without looking back.
An hour later, we were all heading out of the University and into a brand new world of possibilities in Dorcas Duke’s school bus with my Aunt Ella at the wheel. No one was chasing us anymore. Maybe Diana’s people would rebuild. Maybe not. All I knew is that we were free, for the time being. It was an amazing feeling.
Although we were now going into October and New England snow would be coming soon, Aunt Ella pointed the bus north. Hey, we were all Western Massachusetts strong. People like us could hack poxers in the winter, no problem.
After all, we saved the world, didn’t we? What could be harder than that?
Probably a lot.
We’d find out sooner or later.
The End
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Acknowledgements
As always, I would like to give special thanks to David Gilfor for reading over my shoulder, making sure my writing remains compelling, creepy, and humorous. In addition, I would like to thank my readers Shira Block McCormick, Tamara Fricke, and Michelle Scalia for venturing into the world of Tripp Light once again.
I would also like to thank Lois Winston, Ashley Grayson, Debra Dixon, and the team at Bell Bridge Books for their tireless support.
Finally, I would like to once more thank my brilliant nephew, Nick Gilfor, for wading into a literary universe inflicted with Necropoxy and pointing out where I might have gone astray.
They say people don’t see themselves in writing. Yeah. Let’s go with that.
About the Author
Author and playwright HOWARD ODENTZ is a lifelong resident of the gray area between Western Massachusetts and North Central Connecticut. His love of the region is evident in his writing as he often incorporates the foothills of the Berkshires and the small towns of the Bay and Nutmeg states into his work.
Dead End, the much awaited conclusion to the Dead (a Lot) zombie trilogy, is his seventh publication with Bell Bridge Books. Other works include the young adult zombie romps Dead (a Lot) and Wicked Dead, the thrillers What We Kill, and Bloody Bloody Apple, as well as the creepy anthology Little Killers A to Z, and the holiday horror short story Snow.
The mysterious has always played a major role in Howard’s writing. He is endlessly fascinated by the psychological aspects of those who are thrown into thrilling or otherworldly circumstances.
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