by Mark Tufo
“How is that light still on Talbot?” BT asked in hushed tones, with a note of reverence in his voice.
“There’s a machine with Kit-Kats in there, do you have any change Mr. T?” Tommy asked hopefully.
It’s amazing to me that all of us had known Tommy long enough that nobody even looked halfway cross-eyed at him at his pronouncement. If Tommy had said that a convention of clowns respite with balloon animals was in there singing Billy Joel songs, we would all have believed him. Of course I wouldn’t have gone in, clowns are evil, but I still would have believed him.
I pulled into the parking lot. Brendon wisely remained on the street in the event that he needed to make a quick getaway. A few more years of exposure to me and he would be completely infected with my derangement. I was like a proud papa watching his baby take his first steps.
“What are you doing Talbot?” BT leaned in to me and asked, still in that hushed tone.
I wanted to let him know that zombies were more olfactory stimulated than auditory, but then I remembered that there were other demons out there that still went bump in the night. Durgan invaded my thoughts for a moment. I snuffed the thought before it could grow. My mind malignancy could not get past the thought that something was amiss here. Zombies are notorious dark dwellers, relying mostly on smell to track down their prey. Odds of zombies being around were about 10%. Next on my list were bad guys, your average low life, Mad Max types, take whatever you will and destroy the rest. Again this is a relatively small percentage, maybe 10% also. This type, while very dangerous, doesn’t lie in wait. They go out and seek to take. Okay, next came just regular folks doing their best to survive. I hate to keep beating a dead horse but this is also a small percentage, I’ll stick with the 10%. I might not be the greatest role model for this example but I can guarantee I wouldn’t be hanging a ‘We’re Open’ shingle out on my front door. Next we have our garden variety bad guy, using a lure to bring in some unsuspecting slobs. This percentage was considerably higher than the others, maybe 20%. But unless you carried your own personal physician with you, inviting trouble was not always a viable advantage. It was still early enough in the apocalypse that supplies were fairly abundant. Food, clothes and ammo were everywhere. Zombies had little use for them and by this time outnumbered humans thousands to one. So what was in small supply and would become a high trade commodity? Women, God damn it, it always comes down to women. The bane of our existence, and our small party contained three of the golden ones. Okay, that 20% might go up.
Now this part is something I’ve let very few people know. That’s a lie. I’ve let nobody know. This, I’ve come to learn is a huge character flaw in myself. I don’t want to change it and I recognize it for what it is. It’s the inability to reach out and help those in need. I don’t feel the altruistic requirement to help people. Now I’ll die for my family or my friends if the demands require it. I’ve risked my neck for the men I’ve fought next to and even for people that I’ve been tentatively tethered to (think Cash). But I will not go out of my way to help those in need. I’m blown away by the people that used to go to Africa and try to help populations dying from starvation. My first response was always, ‘What is their ulterior motive?’ Yeah, there’s the cynic in me rearing its grotesque head. Doctors and nurses could only be in it for the money, rich people giving to charities was for tax purposes, actors donating time to build houses, free publicity. So the thought that some people were in that motel wanting to help others was by and far the largest percentage of probability and it was easily the most difficult for me to reconcile in my mind.
I looked over my right shoulder as I backed out of the parking lot. Tommy looked like I had just run over a family of rabbits with a lawnmower.
“Did I tell you about the Kit-Kats, Mr. T?” Tommy lamented.
“What are you doing Talbot?” Tracy asked. She hated to see the distress in Tommy’s face.
“Hedging my bets,” was my terse reply.
“Against what?” Tracy asked. “What’s going on?” She had inklings of how deep my disturbed waters ran and for the most part made sure that she didn’t wade too far from shore. But since this whole undertaking had begun she had started to indulge me more and more. I felt sadness that she would someday swim in the turmoil I was mired in daily, but that was beyond my control for now.
I parked next to Brendon on the road without telling anyone my plan. I grabbed my gun and got out. “Tra…” She was already moving into the driver’s seat.
“Hold on Talbot, I’m coming with you,” BT said as he fumbled with his seat belt. The material looked stretched to its capacity around his immense bulk.
“Hold on, BT, I know that you’re a big sweetheart.” He grumbled at that. “But any poor folks in there are going to look at you and think you’re a raging T-Rex.” He took no umbrage to my words. A small smile may have passed his lips. It was difficult to tell in the fading sunlight.
Travis was halfway out the door. I stopped him too. “Not this time champ.” I motioned for him to get back in the car.
“Talbot, let’s just go,” Tracy entreated.
“Go where? I haven’t given up on this place, I’m just not 100% convinced yet,” I answered.
“How convinced are you?” Tracy asked. She had not been expecting an answer, so when I came back with 50-50, she understandably didn’t know whether to be troubled or thankful.
I took that one calming breath that really doesn’t do anything except focus you on the fact you are about to do something foolhardy or dangerous, or a combination of the two. All eyes watched me as I slowly approached the motel. Halfway across the parking lot my concern came to fruition in the form of a green laser dot painted plainly on my chest.
“Dad, why’d you stop?” Travis asked. His voice rang out too loudly in the unaccountable quiet. I hesitated to turn and tell him. I slowly raised my arms in the universal gesture of ‘Don’t put a cavernous hole in my body.’
“Oh fuck,” I heard from a multitude of mouths behind me. I concurred with them completely. I heard multiple car doors open or slide, the cavalry was on the way.
“Make them stop or you’ll be on the ground before you hear the shot.” The disembodied voice said softly for my ears only. It seemed to be coming from above and to the left of me, but I wasn’t willing to bet my life on that fact.
“STOP!” I said loudly. “He says that if you keep coming, he’ll kill me.” The sheer quantity of guns I heard being cocked behind me at least gave me the slight satisfaction in knowing that my death would be avenged ten-fold.
“What’s your business here?” The voice came again, and now I was willing to put some more stock in the premise of his location.
Odds were though he wasn’t the only one on this field of play. No chance this was a laser device from a tape measure. Those were only of the red variety. Green lasers were much more powerful and generally included only on tactical weapons. Would I feel the splintering of my chest plate as it first contorted to accept the intruding projectile and then shattered around the bullet? Would my heart burst as the bullet tore through it, like so many watermelons I had shot? And if I was somehow still alive after all that damage to myself would I be able to register the paralysis my body suffered as my spinal column was severed in two? Would it be better to be shot with a full metal jacketed bullet that would strike small and leave a fist sized opening in my back? Or with a traditional lead round that would mushroom immediately upon impact thus allowing it to damage more vital organs as it crushed to a stop halfway through my being? Maybe a low velocity round that would hit somewhere center mass and tumble through my body only to find a hasty exit through my orbital socket? It was a gruesome picture I was painting. I truly wished I wasn’t the model for it.
I answered my captor’s question honestly. “My business is to not get shot.” I wasn’t expecting a laugh when I answered him but that’s exactly what I received.
“I think that’s all of our businesses.” I could tell from h
is tone he enjoyed the response. But his prior wariness, if it had diminished at all, was only by a negligible amount. “I would feel more comfortable if you put that weapon on the ground,” he said to me.
I wasn’t really in a negotiable place, but what the hell. “And I’d feel more comfortable if I wasn’t painted with a laser. It’s a little unsettling.”
“Well that’s the point isn’t it?”
Great, I got to deal with a realist.
“Okay, you put that gun down, I’ll take the laser off of you but you do realize I’m not the only one that has a bead on you and your traveling party.”
I had figured I was the target. Realizing my family was an errant mosquito bite away from coming under fire was almost more than I could bear. My body shook with rage, my soul quaked with fear. I gently placed my A.R. on the ground. “Alright, I’ve held up my end of the agreement.” The laser unwaveringly still dissected my body. I could hear what sounded like a muffled high intensity argument. Seemed to me someone was very adamant about not having guests. That I was waiting patiently for someone else to decide my fate was not sitting well. I carefully eyed my rifle and got busy deciding how quick I could pick it up and at least go out in a Blaze of Glory.
“Don’t even think about it,” the same voice warned me.
“Too late,” I said. He laughed again. Fuckers have night vision goggles. I felt slightly envious and more than a little pissed at myself that I hadn’t thought to pick some of those gems up. I’m sure Dick’s Sporting Goods would have had some. Not of the military grade but something better than my impotent human vision. Odds were we would have picked this ambush up long before I stumbled my ass across the parking lot. More hushed skirmishing ensued. I had half a mind, the crazier half to be sure, to tell them to hurry up. Holding my arms over my head like this was killing my shoulders. No reason to poke a hornet’s nest though, they don’t even make honey.
After what seemed like indeterminable minutes the arguing stopped. Who won? The ones that wanted to kill us all outright, or the ones that wanted to kill just the men outright?
“Alright, I want you to tell all those people behind you to put their weapons down and come forward with their hands up,” The voice said all business like.
I didn’t need to ponder my response in the slightest. “No.” I’d wished I had those goggles now just to see his expression.
“I don’t think you understood me,” he shot back, with words thankfully.
“Oh I understood you just fine. I’m just not doing what you asked.” Impudence didn’t seem like the right tact but there I was rattling off at the mouth again with reckless abandon.
“We can kill you where you stand. You get that, right?”
“I get that utterly and completely and that is why under no circumstances will I drag my family and friends into your killing zone.”
More hushed arguing. “I’m putting my arms down. My shoulders are killing me!” I yelled.
“Slowly! And do not make a move for that gun!”
“Fine, fine!” I yelled back as I dropped my outstretched hands down and began to rub blood back into my numbed arms.
More hushed brawling ensued. Obviously no succinct chain of command here, Democracies didn’t generally fare so well in survivalist societies but then I remembered I was the one in the less than desirable position.
A woman’s voice shot out this time. I shouldn’t have been surprised at all by her question but I was. “Do you have someone named Tommy with you?”
From behind her I heard another woman’s voice say softly, “That was stupid Maggie, you should have asked them their names.”
I was reaching, but they had opened the door I might as well knock it off its hinges. “Do you have a Kit-Kat machine?” It would have been impossible to not hear their gasps of surprise. “I’ll take that as a yes?”
“How could you know? It was delivered the day the zombies came. It never even made it out into the lobby,” the same female voice asked disbelievingly.
“Maggie, why don’t you just invite them in?” came the other feminine voice, it was worded as a sarcastic challenge and Maggie knew that, but she used the words for her own devices.
“Do you want to come in?” the one that must be Maggie asked.
Before I could even answer I heard Tommy shout from across the way. “Can we get some Kit-Kat bars!?”
“Tommy? Right?” Maggie asked me.
“One and the same,” I answered. The potential for violence had passed like an ill wind but I still wasn’t taking any chances. “I’d like to grab my rifle and shoulder it.”
“Oh yeah sure, go ahead,” came the male voice with not a hint of the earlier malice. We had, in seconds, gone from Showdown at the OK Corral to Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and again it was Tommy that saved the day. He was like a cat with the whole nine lives thing going on. No, that wasn’t quite right, because cats don’t generally give their lives out for others. Whatever he was, he had at the very least saved my ass. I’d buy him that damned Kit-Kat machine.
The danger had passed, I can’t tell you how exactly I’d known but I did. I didn’t consider it gambling our lives on a hunch either. I waved Tracy and Brendon into the parking lot. They must have felt the same way I did because neither of them hesitated, as it was Tracy almost clipped Brendon’s front bumper in her haste to get in. Was Tommy broadcasting good cheer like a high wattage radio station? There was a good chance of it and if Tommy wasn’t concerned then none of us should be.
The little motel wasn’t much to look at. It was two stories tall and basically just a giant box. It was like any other motel you’ve seen 150,000 times before if you had ever traveled the highways of North America. That being said it was in better shape than 95% of those other motels. I’d even wager that during the summer months the pool wasn’t a shade of avocado green. As tired as I was, the Ritz Carlton would not have looked much better. The man lowered a ladder down to us that I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe because it was painted black but more likely because I had a green laser dot on my chest. Those tend to transfix your attention to the detriment of all other things.
Tommy had come up beside me, eyeing the ladder warily.
I absently fingered the gun on my shoulder. Unease trickled in from a small black hole in the base of my skull. “What’s the matter, Tommy?” I asked as innocently sounding as possible.
Tommy turned to look at me, his face a mask of seriousness. “The Kit-Kats aren’t up there.”
The unease evaporated under the light of a thousand suns. I laughed until tears streamed from my eyes, and I’m sorry to say, as snot sluiced from my nose. Tommy handed me a wrapper from his phantom Pop-Tarts. I started laughing harder at the prospect of wiping my nose with a piece of papery tinfoil. Catching my breath was becoming agonizingly difficult, in a good way.
Nicole had got out of the car to see what was so funny. When she saw the state that I was in she felt the need to comment. “Ew, gross Dad, I’ll get you a paper towel.”
I started laughing harder, I guess it was the pent up endorphins. Under my tutelage, my daughter suffered to a degree of germaphobia. She doesn’t have the advanced degree like I do, but she is working on her undergrad status. I laughed at how she cringed at my condition. Hell, if I wasn’t laughing so hard I would have been grossed out too. True to her word, within thirty seconds or so she had brought me half a roll of paper towels. I was beginning to come down from my self-induced high. Shit I’m a cheap date. That almost got me going again but streamers of snot nearly a foot long kept it at bay. Tommy was watching me fascinated. He kept absently wiping his nose, maybe in the hopes that I would follow his lead.
“Ew, Dad! Take these!” my daughter said, thrusting the paper towels into my hand.
“How’s about a kiss for your dear old dad?” I made like I would go after her and she fled like I was the world’s largest oozing sore. I was moments away from bursting. My sinuses ached from the fluid I had pumped through them. I couldn’t e
ven begin to explain how happy I was when later Maggie would break out a First Aid kit that contained Benadryl.
I assured Tommy that we would get some Kit-Kats before the night was through, but right now we should meet our hosts. That seemed to mollify him somewhat and at least his bottom lip stopped quivering. Tommy made sure he was first up the ladder. I think he did it just so that he could get the greeting part out of the way and the eating part underway. Again Tommy’s action made me realize that this was a safe place but it still takes more than a minute or so to get the stain of a bullet beacon off of your mind.
While the event is taking place and adrenaline is surging through your veins, you have a difficult time assessing just how much danger you are in or how close you are to taking a dirt nap. It’s after the fact, when you’ve burned through your go-go juice and the imminent danger has passed, that is when the mind fuck really starts to set in. You’ve never heard of Amid Traumatic Stress Syndrome. There’s no time to become a basket case in battle. My friends that didn’t react back in Iraq, well, I buried them.
But now that this last crisis had passed, my knees were weak and my breath was ragged. I couldn’t get the images out of my head of my inconsolable wife and daughter as they looked down on my lifeless body. I knew the boys would soldier on. I had prepared them well. Even Tommy would be alright. He had an uncanny ability to see the world in a better light, rather than the black one that covered us now. Could rose-colored glasses change the landscape that much? No, for the umpteenth time I knew in my depths it was something much grander than I was prepared to accept or acknowledge with him. I knew Henry would feel the loss, say what you will but I know I’m more than just a food delivery system for him. If you never had the grand opportunity to befriend (not own) a bully than you have truly missed out on one of life’s pleasures. I have never encountered a breed of dog that possessed more of the grander human traits, love and affection, without the less savory ones, hostility and aggression. Yes, Henry would feel the loss, of that I was sure. He would not have the capacity to understand where I had gone off to, hopefully he would think I went to live out the rest of my life on some huge hominid farm. Yes, these are all the thoughts that coursed through my head as I marshaled my reserves and ascended the ladder.