by Mark Tufo
Tracy shuddered again.
“Come on, let’s get down to the van. We stand out here too much longer and we’re going to look like we ran into Medusa.” She didn’t argue.
“Do you think the antibiotics are helping?” she asked as a frozen tear descended down her cheek.
“I think it keeps the infection in check. I’m not sure the meds alone can cure it though. Without them though, whatever it is would be able to gain a bigger if not complete foothold.”
“Mike, what are we going to do?”
We had reached the van. I fumbled with the keys, partly to stall an answer but mostly because I couldn’t feel my fingers. I struggled with my door which seemed like it had frozen in place. I couldn’t really blame it, although I looked like a dork as Tracy’s opened up with a minimal effort from her. The inside of the car was little better than a meat locker. If the car didn’t start, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to make it back up into the house before we solidified.
Heat and humidity suck as far as I’m concerned. I’ve voiced that opinion, over and over throughout my life. My argument was that you could only get so naked to get cooler whereas you could always put more clothes on in the winter to get warmer. But this was different, I was physically distressed at how cold I had become. My thought pattern felt addled as I nearly snapped the key in half trying to turn it the wrong way in the ignition. Tracy didn’t look much better off than me.
“Did you say they have Philly Cheesesteak’s in Chicago?” she asked.
I had no clue what the hell she was talking about but it distracted me enough before I sheared the key off. The engine did the slow ‘whirring’ sound of a car that has no desire to start and wants to make it abundantly clear on its stance. I held the key in place many long seconds after I should have let it go. Whirrr... whirr... whir... vroom! Glacial air spewed from the heater vents as the engine caught. My breath cascaded down into my lap in frozen droplets of water. The slap of wintry infused air slapped across Tracy’s face and she broke out of her fog.
“Holy shit, that’s cold!” she said as she placed her hands over the vent.
“If only I could invent an air conditioner to work that well.”
She didn’t see the humor as I reached to shut the ‘heater’ off. After some careful thrusts on the gas pedal to flood the engine with some fuel, I placed the car in gear, somewhat certain it wouldn’t stall. We both held our breaths as the transmission engaged, drawing some life from the engine and nearly extinguishing it. I held one foot on the brake and one halfway down on the gas as I flooded high explosive fluid through the valves. A minute or two later we were up by the house. Tracy got out before we stopped moving, heading straight for the house.
“Don’t sweat it Hon.” I said to her retreating back. “I’ll get the stuff out of here.” I didn’t even get the customary wave over her back for that. I shut the car off, grabbed what was immediately close to me and rushed to follow. My damaged knee made forward progress an aggressively slow endeavor. There was an infinitesimally long delay as I got to the door and there was a flood of people heading out to grab stuff out of the van. Courtesy dictated that I move to the side and let them out so they could help. I pushed myself through the throng, courtesy be damned. I was a heartbeat and a half from frostbite and I liked all my digits exactly where they were.
Tracy hovered dangerously close to the roaring fire. I almost pushed her in as I jockeyed for position to gain some heat. Degree by degree we came back to our own. The tingling pain of blood flowing back to extremities was an actual welcome sensation. It meant life, life in all its glorious triumphs and disasters. I kissed Tracy long and hard there, reveling in the fact that we still endured and doubly thankful that one appendage still had the grace to feel the press of blood.
“Get a room,” Jen said as she sat down in one of the lounge chairs next to a bookshelf.
We broke our kiss; warmth radiated down from my lips. Tracy even looked a little flushed. I was going to try that Viagra out tonight, guaranteed! I shouted ‘Yes’ in my head, with the fist pump and all.
“We got all the stuff in. Some of the food is frozen solid though,” Jen finished.
To reiterate her point, Tommy came into the room with a Twinkie clamped in a pair of salad tongs. He pushed me over a little to the side so that his Twinkie could get some heat.
“Am I in your way Tommy?” I said with good-humored sarcasm.
“A little bit, Mr. T, could you move over a scootch?”
I laughed. “Yeah, I figured it was time to get some of these clothes off anyway.”
“Great!” Tommy said, never taking his eyes off his cold prize. “You were kind of in the way.”
I stood up and, like I expected, my knee let it be known about its condition. I wondered how a Percocet would interact with a Viagra. I couldn’t see the sense of having a hard on I could slam in a door and not be able to feel. I involuntarily crossed my legs at the errant thought.
“You alright Mike?” Tracy asked.
“Yeah just my knee.” Although it was obvious from my gesture that wasn’t the cause.
“Maybe you should get that checked out.”
Again, obviously she was talking about my knee but when I answered I was thinking completely about something a little closer to my belt line. “Yeah you’re right, I’d definitely like to get that checked out.” My lascivious leer almost gave me away as Tracy looked questioningly at me.
I shuffled out of the room like someone double my age and half hopped, half pulled myself up the stairs to the old room Tracy and I used whenever we came to visit. Now that I thought about it, we hadn’t been in years. Not since Everett had died to be specific. Sure, Tracy and Carol talked almost daily but that’s not the same as basic human contact. Again I marveled at how she had survived so well in such an inhospitable place all by herself. In point of fact, the reason she had survived was most likely because she was in such a place.
I finally made it to my room, thankful that someone had the presence of mind to bring some of my stuff up here. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot but I had grabbed a crap load of knee braces and ace bandages when we were in the Rite-Aid and I was going to make good use of them now. I was going to have to peel my layers of clothing off like an onion sheds skin before I could do so. My knee was a sorry sight when I finally got down to it. It was black and blue and nearly double the size of its brother. I gingerly wrapped it in two ace bandages. The elastic knee brace I had snagged would not stretch large enough to accommodate the swelling. I knew I needed to put ice on it but after my near death by popsicle-experience today I couldn’t even begin to imagine placing frozen water anywhere on my body.
I took two Tylenol and was immediately thinking about taking something stronger. The pain in my knee was beginning to rage. It was as if the heat from the fire had taken this long to thaw out the half gallon of fluid that surrounded my injured joint. If the pain in my knee was a grizzly bear, the Tylenol was like firing two air soft pellets at it. I dropped onto the bed with the bag of goodies from the pharmacy as pain lanced through my leg. I greedily downed first one and then another pain killer and... then another. I lay like that for at least ten minutes. The pain never truly went away, it just became muted. When I felt I could get up without crying too much, I used the head rail to prop myself up. I was greeted instantly and not so unpleasantly with the fogged over countenance of one under the influence of drugs, which thankfully I was. The pain in my knee was still sharp. On some level I realized that and still I didn’t care.
Unbeknownst to me I had somehow levitated down into the kitchen. Carol looked up from some delicious smelling stew she was preparing.
“Mike, you been in my Jack again?”
I’m pretty sure I answered with the ever witty, “The what now?” More likely it came out as, “Duh?”
“You know you’re in your underpants right?” she said pointing what appeared to be an oversized spoon at me.
“Tightie whities?” I aske
d hoping that wasn’t the case.
She cocked her head. “Just how much of my booze did you drink Mike?”
“Whitie tighties?” I mumbled, slivers of drool escaping from the corner of my mouth.
“Maybe you should just sit down,” she said as she pulled a chair out from the kitchen table.
I obeyed. Not that standing anymore was becoming much of an option. Drool landed on my blue boxer shorts. “Ah, not frightie mighties!”
“Tracy!” Her mom yelled.
“Yeah Mom?” I heard the response from the living room.
“You might want to get in here,” her mother answered, turning back to the crock pot.
Tracy came in, looked quickly over to her mom and then to me, the source of the issue at hand. “Oh Talbot, what are you doing?”
“I’m not wearing nightie bities,” I answered gallantly.
“That’s a good thing, I guess.” What the hell else could she say. “Come on, let’s get you into the living room.”
“Not so sure I can get back up, Hon.” I think that came out nearly perfect, though my tongue felt as thick and dry as a plank.
“You don’t smell like booze. What’s the matter?”
I pointed to my knee. Just since my short jaunt down into the kitchen my knee had grown nearly half again what I had started with, so much so that the ace bandage was nearly stretched to its capacity.
“Talbot!” Tracy said alarmed. “What the fuck?”
I don’t remember much about the walk out of the kitchen and onto the most comfortable couch I have ever had the pleasure of laying down on, except for a lot of finger pointing and laughing. Most of that coming from BT and he was more drugged up than I was.
CHAPTER 23 Journal Entry Twenty-One
I didn’t have a clue how long I slept. When I finally awoke it wasn’t to the easy, peaceful, content feeling one arises to after a deep and satisfying sleep. There was no exaggerated stretch as I alit from the bed and casually scratched my nuts. Oh come on, that’s the first thing after the body unfolding that every guy does when they get out of bed. Don’t ask me why, maybe it’s an evolutionary legacy, probably to rid oneself of prehistoric mites. Anyway, back to the story. The distinctive sound of a gunshot prohibits one from the normal routine. I stood up as rapidly as my vertigo-addled brain would allow. Who knew we were in the midst of a 7.0 earthquake. I braced myself against the couch until the worst of the shakes had subsided. I took no small pleasure in the fact that the pain in my knee had subsided to something I could live with, if not entirely like.
I still pushed off with my right leg though. No sense in tempting the fates. BT stirred on his resting place but did not awaken. Had I imagined the whole thing? I heard nothing else. The only thing that gave me pause was that a single gunshot these days was rarer than a virgin Catholic schoolgirl. It was approaching dawn. I could tell by the murky light filtering through the windows, but no one was up yet that I could tell. There was no sense of alarm, no commotion, no damn bacon cooking, ooh that sounded good. I had finally managed to gingerly walk my way up to the hallway that led to the front door, when a fully winter weather bundled Carol came in toting her shotgun.
She didn’t seem particularly startled to see me standing there. “You know you’re still in your underwear right?” she asked me.
Reflexively, I looked down, slightly more embarrassed this time than the last.
She laughed. “Don’t worry about it, want some coffee?” She stooped over and placed her shotgun next to the door, in a holder that seemed perfectly tailored to that specific job. She looked up to see me watching her. “Did I wake you?” she asked.
I had a sarcastic comment all lined up but then I thankfully remembered she was my mother-in-law and wisely thought better of unloosing my dumb-ass comment on the world.
“No, I was ready to get up anyway.”
“Hadn’t seen one in a couple of days, was kind of hoping that was over.”
What she had seen, well, let’s just say there isn’t much of a bear problem during the late winter season.
“Speaking of that, Carol. How did you know it was out there? I’d been meaning to ask, got a little side tracked last night.”
“Oh those first few days were tough. I was too scared to sleep. However, even fear will only go so far. More than once I woke up to one of those things at the door or the window. Damn near sent my ticker into overdrive. I can’t tell you how many times I just wanted to shoot through the door or the window. Good thing the practical side of me took over. I don’t have the materials to fix what I would have destroyed.”
“What the hell did you do?” I asked alarmed.
“I opened the window up and then killed them,” she said as naturally as if she had opened a window to let an apple pie cool on the windowsill.
“Fuhhh…” I started. Her watchful gaze made me pull back from my colorful phrasing. “I think I would have shot the glass out.”
“Have you felt how cold it is out there?”
I nodded, not only did I get her point but also felt it. “So then what?”
“You mean how did I sleep and still defend the homestead?”
I nodded again, completely enraptured, bacon momentarily forgotten as I followed her and her story into the kitchen.
“Well, I rigged an alarm. I went out about fifty or so feet from the house and set wooden stakes into the ground, every twenty feet or so in a circle around the house. Then I screwed an eye hook in each one, about waist high,” she said as she held her hand roughly at her belt line. “Then I threaded rope through all of them. Then finally I brought a rope all the way up to the house and attached it to a bell. Damn thing was worse than an alarm clock. Couldn’t hit snooze, if you get my meaning.”
My mouth must have been agape.
“You know Mike, I’ve been on a farm most of my life. Hard work is nothing new to me.”
“Sorry. That’s just genius.”
“Necessity. You want sugar in your coffee?”
“Please,” I said absently as I grabbed the mug from her. “Where is it now, I didn’t see it when we came in yesterday.”
“After Tommy’s message, I took down the part that led to the house and the barn. I didn’t want you to run it over mistakenly. Just because I can do hard work doesn’t mean I want to repeat it and a good portion of what is still up is under snow. Last night after our little talk in the kitchen... ”
I flushed with embarrassment. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. I saw your knee after Tracy unwrapped it. I wasn’t even sure how you were still standing. I did my best to drain it.”
“Oh, so that’s why it feels better. Thank you, and you won’t mind if I don’t ask how you did it?”
She laughed again. “No, I’ll get over it. So after you went to sleep,” she emphasized ‘sleep,’ “I re-strung the alarm. Didn’t expect to get company but I didn’t want to make any unexpected guests feel welcome.”
“Was there just the one then?” I asked her.
She looked hard at me. “You must have been sleeping pretty heavily. There were three. Travis and Jen took care of them all. They’re still out there making sure no more are coming. I wanted to get my old bones inside and by the fire. Now that I’ve got help I’m not too proud to use it.”
“Three?”
“And by the looks of them they look like they’ve traveled a ways.”
I bet they had! Fucking Eliza, I was going to slit her throat personally. I momentarily thought about heading outside, but garbed like I was, my manhood would shrivel to half its size and that I could not stomach or afford.
“I brought some clothes down for you, figured you’d want to go out as soon as you got up and the less stairs you climb right now the better.”
I nodded to her, my terse thoughts elsewhere.
“Mike, your knee hurting again? You look mighty upset all of a sudden.”
“I just think we brought a whole lot of heartache down on you Carol, by coming her
e, I mean.”
She gently caressed my cheek. “You’ve done no such thing. You want bacon for breakfast?”
“There could be a sainthood in this for you Carol.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said as she turned back around.
I heard Jen and Travis come inside. It would have been hard not too, as loud as they were stomping the excess snow off their boots. I had just finished pulling on my third sweater and met them in the hallway. Jen’s color was nearly the shade of the material she was liberally shedding in the mudroom.
“Is that bacon?” Travis said happily as he headed into the kitchen.
I noticed that Jen waited patiently until Travis was out of earshot before she spoke.
“I won’t swear it Mike, the damage was just too great, but I’d bet money those people, I mean zombies,” she shook her head, “were from Little Turtle.”
To think something bad is happening is bad enough, but to get confirmation is downright shitty. “Are you sure?”
We both knew I was hoping for an alternate outcome.
“Like I said, Mike, when you blow someone’s head off it’s a little difficult to get a positive I.D.”
“Well to be fair, you didn’t quite say it like that.”
“You know what I meant.”
“Yeah I know what you meant. I just want to choose not to believe it.”
“Are you going out to check?”
“No.”
She studied my less than poker face. “You knew they’d be coming?”
“Figured as much. I’d sort of hoped that maybe this was the place where we could finally stop and plant some roots. It feels so right here. Cold, sure, but the energy seems so strong. I guess maybe I thought this might be some sort of hallowed ground. Crazy right?”