by Mark Tufo
“MOVE!” Joann shouted from off to our right. I for one did not need to be told even once. I pulled Travis out of the way of the crashing door. The office shook as the door slammed home. My knees were shaking, mostly from the pain, but some, some of it was from Jen’s shooting.
“Looks like Mike just put a cork on a wine bottle,” Mrs. Deneaux said from off to the side of the room.
“Excuse me?” My wife asked her, in as nice a tone as she could contrive. But seething beneath the surface was a fury looking for a place to be unleashed. I didn’t say a word, lest that luminous ire shine my way.
Mrs. Deneaux took many moments to answer Tracy. She took two full inhales from her cigarette and answered on her second exhale, the smoke somehow punctuating her words. “I said, it looks like Mike just put a cork on a wine bottle.”
“I know what you said you old bat!” Tracy burned. (I was doing an imaginary fist bump with her, ‘You go girl!’) Mrs. Deneaux was made of stauncher stuff than I had given her credit for though. No one in their right mind would ever call Tracy anything but a petite woman, but with anger issuing forth from every pore in her body she looked like she could pull the sagging gray green skin right off of Mrs. Deneaux’s old bones. But yet the ‘old bat’ as Tracy so eloquently put it, didn’t bat an eyelash at Tracy’s harsh words.
“Oh, honey,” Mrs. Deneaux rasped through her smoke tortured throat. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“The FUCK you didn’t!” Tracy screamed, her finger stopping just short of puncturing Deneaux’s larynx. This time Deneaux did step back. “All the good people that died, and you survived! That above every other fucked up thing that has happened proves to me there is no GOD!”
The entire room held its collective breath, even the babies. How the hell they knew what was going on, I don’t know. I went over to Tracy and grabbed her by the waist pulling her close to me; she sobbed softly on my shoulder.
“Really, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Mrs. Deneaux said to a room full of deaf ears.
The truck came back a few minutes later but it felt like hours. Time stretched worse than in a Twilight Zone episode. Mrs. Deneaux finally shuffled off to be with her nephew. Even he seemed reluctant to acknowlege her. Family duty, though, bound him to the task. He shrugged his shoulders at me, whether to let me know ‘What can you do she’s an old cantankerous bitch?’ or ‘Don’t lump me in with this old cantankerous bitch?’ I wasn’t sure. We all turned as the familiar tell tale sounds of a truck backing up impeded our individual conversations.
“What’s he doing?” I said more to say something than to gain a response.
“Backing up I would imagine,” Joann said seriously. She seemed to be holding onto this small piece of hope with both hands.
“We can’t go through the gate Talbot,” BT said matter of factly.
“Why?” Joann asked. It was hard to watch the hope sail out of her like a popped balloon.
“Umm well let’s see... ” I started.
Thankfully (because I didn’t have to do it) or not (because he was a prick about it) Justin had the ill-temper to quash out whatever remnants of promise Joann hung on as he answered in my stead. “Because the inside of the gate is full of dead zombies and the outside is full of live ones.” He laughed, dark circles under his eyes lending menace to his words.
“That’s all I meant,” Mrs. Deneaux said. Her nephew did his best to quiet her.
But yet the back-up beeping persisted. “Come on,” I said desperately. “Alex has to be thinking the same thing we are.”
“Brendon!” My daughter screamed, not from terror but from concern. “What are you doing?” Almost like a well-trained platoon, all of the occupants of the room took up strategic placement with Nicole by the windows. Brendon was on the top of the truck with a rope and some sort of makeshift grappling hook. It looked like a crow bar, but it was tough to tell from all the rope that was tied around it.
I saw immediately what Alex and Brendon had planned. “That’s not going to work,” I said to myself.
“What’s not going to work?” BT asked.
“Watch,” I answered. BT didn’t seem all too pleased with my response. I don’t think he was big on surprises either. Really, I hoped that what they had planned would work but physics wasn’t on their side.
Brendon lowered the ‘grappling hook’ down to the cage assembly. After a couple of tries and some errant zombies getting in the way, Brendon was able to snag the cage. “Alright got it Alex, go slow!” he shouted over his shoulder. As Alex placed the truck in gear there was one long second where we all held our breaths as Brendon nearly took a header. Nicole nearly fainted. Brendon quickly righted himself and gave us all a weak smile to let us know he was okay. Alex pulled ahead slowly as Brendon let slack out of the rope. Finally the truck had gone far enough that the true test of this experiment would come to its unfulfilling conclusion. The end of the rope was tied off to the truck’s rear bumper; I didn’t gauge that as being the problem area, that or the rope itself looked heavy enough to leash a T-Rex. No, the problem lay in the grappling hook assembly, without a hole to thread the rope through, no knot was going to be able to stand up to the forces applied to it.
The loud ‘twang’ was immediately followed by a string of curses as Brendon nearly sacrificed his ear to a valiant but doomed attempt to free us. The rope had snapped back dangerously close to Brendon’s head as it slipped freely from the pry bar. The cage had rocked slightly and had tried in vain to prove me wrong.
“Plan B, Alex!” Brendon yelled. "Give me a sec!" He leaned down and removed a small piece of rope that had been tied around the tubes that are used to keep the trailer's doors in place. Then he swung them completely open.
We had no idea what plan B was, but those were usually a last ditch effort and they were never thought out well. Ever heard of a plan C? No, you haven’t, because nobody ever survives plan B.
“You guys are going to want to get away from the door!” Brendon yelled to us.
Nearly everyone looked at him like a deer in headlights, some backed up. I could only muster an “Oh fuck,” as Tracy dragged me away from the window.
Alex ground the truck into reverse. When he hit the cage at 5 miles per hour it sounded like Thor had taken his hammer to a mountaintop. Wood splintered and shattered as the bars were forced back through the office. Babies wailed, women cried. I might have pissed myself; I wasn’t stopping to check. The truck came to a sudden stop as the rear end ran into the stout walls of the sheriff’s office. The bars traveled mercifully another two feet before they came crashing into a desk, stopping all momentum. Dust and debris were settling all around us when a small round of cheers erupted and abruptly stopped with Brendon’s shouts of warning.
“Get the fuck in the truck. They’re going underneath!”
Who ‘they’ were was implicitly known. Why they were going under the truck also didn’t need any further explanation. Marta and her two kids along with Jodi and Eddy, plus Joann and the two kids she was helping to take care of were thrust to the forefront. I had watched Titanic. It’s always women and children first, but apparently Thad hadn’t learned the chivalry lesson. He cut off the women and the children and headed for the rear of the tractor trailer where the open doors led into a black hole of relative safety. Thad had one foot on the bumper and one on the ground. I wanted to run up and grab the prick and beat some gallantry into him, when somebody (thing) beat me to it. Thad’s eyes grew wide in horror as a hand shot out from under the truck and grabbed his ankle. I watched in (satisfactory) horror as he was pulled over. His head violently slammed into the ground as he lost balance. Could we have helped him? Maybe, but his selfish act actually turned into our salvation. Thad’s body became a wedge between us and them. We could hear his muffled screams. Thankfully it wasn’t too loud. I was certain that either the third or fourth bite had ripped out his Adam’s apple. Marta and Joann stood transfixed, but now was not the time for delay.
I ran ahead
and made sure to get both feet on the rear bumper. “Come on!” I shouted. You don’t survive this long in a zombie apocalypse without having some quick-witted decision-making. For their part I was proud of Marta and Joann. Even as the strum of sinew snapping and splintering sounds of bone chewing issued forth from beneath the truck, they moved forward and thrust their children up into my waiting arms. Within a minute almost all of the refugees were on aboard, save one: Mrs. Deneaux.
“Mrs. Deneaux, we’re leaving,” I said as I extended my hand out to her. She looked for a moment where her nephew had disappeared and where now heads and extended hands of zombies began to appear. “Now or never.”
She stepped on one of the zombies’ hands as she took my proffered hand. “Twit,” she said. Whether to me or to her newly dearly departed nephew I wasn’t sure.
I watched in dismay as the town of Vona and my beloved Jeep faded into the distance. Alex waited until we had outpaced even the most determined zombies before he pulled over. The relief in his face as he hugged his wife and kids was immeasurable. No matter how hard I tried though, I couldn’t shake the feelings of foreboding. We had escaped this last disaster but at a significant loss of lives and materials, and both were in very short supply.
CHAPTER 13 Journal Entry Twelve
‘My Jeep,’ I mumbled as I hung my head low.
Joann came up to put an arm around me. “Thad sacrificed himself for us,” she said, not realizing the true reasons for my demeanor.
I looked up, my eyes red rimmed. I swear I almost said, ‘Huh?’ She took my silence as agreement to her sentiment. Fuck him. He got what he deserved. If she needed to assimilate what she saw in a different light to suit her needs, what right did I have to rain on her parade.
“Hey Mr. T, Ryan’s back,” Tommy said delightedly as he licked blueberry off his lips.
I almost didn’t hear him through my thoughts. I was actually in mourning for my Jeep, replaying some of the highlights I had shared with her. There were the hundreds of off-road excursions, some nearly ending in both of our demises. There were the Saturday road trips with the top off, and the time I got caught in a torrential downpour. It was miserable back then but still it yielded me a bittersweet smile now.
“Mike, it’s only a car,” Tracy said placing her hand on my cheek, ever so slightly placing pressure on it to turn my gaze away from the direction we had left behind. She knew, she knew me probably too well.
“Is this how you felt, when I… I ruined your car?” I asked hopefully, looking for an ally in my misery.
“Uh, no Mike, it was a car, not a kid. Get a grip,” she answered.
Ah, my Tracy, she knew how to knock some much needed sense into me. I’ll miss that car till they lay me down to rest but at least I now know enough not to show it.
“Wait. What?” I said turning towards Tommy, his words finally registering in my brain.
“I said…” Tommy answered, looking slightly exasperated which I knew was all show.
Was that strawberry jam on his chin?
“Ryan’s back!” he finished gleefully. I thought he was going to break out into a happy dance. His influence was contagious. Thoughts of my Jeep plunged to the rear of my desolated thoughts.
“What’s he saying, Tommy?” I asked guardedly. Ryan was a valuable asset to our existence but the majority of his ‘messages’ were of the dire warning type. Not usually something you liked to listen to on an empty stomach. Speaking of which, I was starving, I couldn’t even remember the last time I had eaten something that did not come out of a stupid foil pack. I momentarily shifted my gaze to the long gone boxes of MRE’s stored in the back of my Jeep. ‘Oh my poor Jeep.’ I shook my head, I wasn’t going down that road again, not just yet. It was exceedingly difficult to not think of food as Tommy’s cinnamon and syrup laced breath washed over my olfactory receptors.
“Wait… did you just have some French toast?” I asked in disbelief. He looked like he was going to give me an answer I would have a difficult time swallowing. “Never mind,” I said holding up my hand. “I don’t want to know.”
“He says we should get far away from Vona.”
More than some part of that message seemed to becoming directly from the messenger and not the spirit guide but I was going to let it slide, if only this one time.
Tommy’s visage changed considerably as he passed on the next bit of Ryan’s message. “He also says that what we gain next is going to be greatly overshadowed by what we lose.”
“Any chance he could be a little more cryptic?” I said sardonically.
Tommy just tilted his head at me. I was pondering those ominous words as I watched my bully, Henry, go from person to person to receive a much needed scratch behind the ears or belly rub. My little socialite seemed to be spreading as much love as he received. People that I hadn’t seen smile in days were openly grinning as they petted and praised the brown butt-wiggling butterball. Henry made sure that everyone got a chance to sample his wares, with the very noticeable exception of two. The first was Mrs. Deneaux, that wasn’t so much a surprise as she just exuded bitchiness. The second however rocked me to my core. Henry wanted nothing to do with Justin. The dog made a wide skirt around him. I watched as Justin seemed to casually dismiss the slight. But I caught a look on Justin’s face of pure murderous intent as the dog walked on by. He slowly let his countenance fade as he realized I was looking at him. I shivered. He smiled coldly.
Riding in the rear of the tractor-trailer was not all it was cracked up to be. I couldn’t believe that I had actually bitched when Paul had decided to ride in the truck instead of in the Jeep. That had been more of a self-imposed punishment for him than anything else. What little we had for padding did nothing to prevent teeth rattling contact with the floor and walls whenever the truck hit anything larger than a penny or deeper than a dinner plate on the roadway. After three weeks (okay, melodramatic, it was actually only 8 hours), of kidney crushing, liver lacerating, pancreas punching, heart hammering, esophagus eschewing (should I keep going on?) brain busting, ass aching, riding, Alex brought the truck to a much needed stop.
Tracy openly laughed at me as I grabbed onto the small railing halfway up the trailer walls. My slow ascent was punctuated by the pops and protestations of my aching body.
Tommy sheepishly grinned. “Want some help, old man?” he said, and then as he watched my astonished expression he threw Tracy under the bus. “Mrs. T told me to say that!” he fairly wailed. Even Travis had to smile as he placed a shoulder under my arm to help me up. All of this was pretty funny and I was happy for the relief if only in brevity, but the hampering of my destroyed knee had brought the odds of my family’s survivability down a few notches. I did not want to have to survive being dependent on others to get me through this plight. My eyes slid across the back of Mrs. Deneaux as she was helped off the back of the truck. That bitch was going to be the one that danced across my grave. I could almost feel it in my bones.
Alex came around the rear of the truck to see how his ‘charges’ were doing. He smiled as he watched me finally gain my full longitudinal ability. “Blow me,” I told him as I hobbled towards the exit.
“What?” he asked innocently. “I didn’t say anything.” I braced myself on his shoulder as I gingerly stepped down off the truck. Alex thankfully waited until the pain that clouded my higher reasoning ability tailed off before he began to speak. “Mike, we’re about an hour or so out of Kansas City, Missouri.” I looked at him questioningly. “That’s where I’m going to start my southerly route.” My face must have visibly fallen because he hastened on. “You should be able to get some transportation in the city and then you can catch route 29 all the way into Fargo.”
My heart suddenly felt heavy, this parting was going to have all the finality of death. We would go on and give each other addresses where the other was going to be, just in case we were in the neighborhood, but even in the old realm of machinations this was an empty promise. One made only as a courtesy.
Alex took the reins. “Mike has family he wants to try and find, as do I.”
BT’s expression turned stormy. “Whoa, listen, both of you. We all have family and we’d love to find out what happened to them. But now we are all family,” he punctuated this by thumping his chest and spreading his arms to include all of us. “This isn’t about individual quests, this is about mutual survival. We are ALL we have left!” His voice thundered. His words hit hard. I hoped he was wrong.
“BT, this is something I have to do,” I said gravely.
“Talbot, how far you going to make it on that knee?” he shouted; my hair blew back from the force of it.
“BT,” Alex said, stepping between the angry giant and myself, risking amputation by placing his hand on BT’s chest, as BT swatted it away.
“You just going to let him go Alex?” BT seemed to deflate a little within his own skin. “Look at him, Alex, if his hand wasn’t on your shoulder he’d fall over from the pain. He’s nearly crippled.”
The words stung, but I’d be damned if I’d take my hand from Alex and prove him right.
“What do you want me to do BT? He’s a grown man, he can make his own decisions.”
“Yeah but his decisions affect us all, now,” BT said, several degrees of volume lower than when he had started. The wind truly did seem to be out of his sails now. But I was leery. Gusts and gales could pop up unexpectedly.