“The Texas state bird,” he proudly informed her.
She cast a sideways glance at Dan and rolled her eyes.
Paul stuck his shovel into the ground with a grunt. “I swear to God, if you don’t shut up!” He glared at Gary through bloodshot eyes ringed with black circles. Sweat glistened over every inch of his entire body, leaving dark trails running down his face.
Gary looked down at his worn Columbia hikers and shut up.
Paul’s chest rose and fell as he regarded Gary with vitriol. “You obviously didn’t get the message last night!” Paul said, veins tensing in his shiny neck.
“I’m sorry, Paul. I just...”
“Yeah, we heard ya the first time. You got a case of the gibber-jabbers. Good for you! Now, if you don’t get the hell outta here you’re gonna end up with a case of the..”
“Wendy, can you get me some water?” Dan piped in, wiggling an empty water bottle upside down.
“Yep,” she said, getting up and dusting off her rear end.
“I’ll go with ya,” Gary said, popping up as well and following Wendy.
“And keep going!” Paul yelled.
Dan watched them go and then turned to Paul, who grabbed his shovel and went back to digging. Dan inhaled a deep breath of the crisp country air, wiped his forehead with the back of his sweaty arm and stabbed his shovel back into the Earth.
Squirrels chased each other around in the late morning sunlight, oblivious of the apocalyptic changes around them. It irked Paul.
After gently laying Sophia’s body, wrapped in three blankets and a blue tarp, into the shallow hole, they returned the last shovelfuls of dirt to the ground. Dan dropped his shovel to the ground and stared at the fresh plot in front of him.
Paul stuck his shovel into the ground with a grunt and stood over the grave with his chest rising and falling. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirt sleeve and planted a cross - crudely made from some white trim he had found in the garage - deep into the fresh soil. Dan watched him bend down and tenderly rub his filthy hand across the loose dirt. He rested a hand on Paul’s shoulder and then walked away.
A cardinal sang out a musical trill off in the distance as the wind rustled Paul’s hair while his vision blurred.
“I love you so much,” he whispered. “I love you more than anything in the world, babycakes. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Sniffling, he wiped his eyes and nose with his dirty shirt.
“What am I supposed to do now?” he asked, raising his head to see the same two squirrels zip past him again and wind their way up a nearby tree as if there was a magical spiral staircase around it.
He stood back up, tears carving out dark brown paths down his cheeks, and looked from the grave to the awesome view. His eyes slowly went back and forth from the view to the grave. He dropped his head and cried some more, knowing he had failed the one person he wanted to protect the most. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled with a big sniff. When he turned back for the house, he saw Dan watching him from the back deck, guarding him. Nobody goes alone. Even now.
Chapter Nineteen
“You okay?” Dan asked, even though his eyes said he already knew the answer.
Paul whisked past him without speaking. For a second, Dan looked like he was going to say the something he had been sitting on before but Paul was in no mood to hear it if he was. He tromped across the deck, tiredly slid open the massive glass door and disappeared into the kitchen.
Dan followed him inside.
“Get your hands up and get in here!” Gary yelled as they entered the living room.
They froze in their tracks. The only thing to move was Dan’s jaw hitting the floor when he saw Gary holding Sophia’s gun to Wendy’s head.
“What the hell is this?” Dan said, sweeping his wide-eyes from Wendy’s twisted face to her empty holster to the black handgun tucked in Gary’s pants.
Gary fired a shot over their heads into the gray painted wall behind them. They flinched downward and stumbled back.
“This here’s an intervention, is what the hell this is! Things have gotten entirely too dull around here. Now unhook those gun belts, drop em on the sofa and get over there on your knees!” Gary yelled, pointing the pink gun to the corner of the room with the broken TV.
Neither Dan nor Paul moved or said anything. Sweat dripped down their muddy faces as they analyzed the unforeseen situation with incredulous eyes.
“I’ll do it!” Gary said, driving the cold barrel into the back of Wendy’s head with one hand and yanking her long hair with the other.
She screamed to the vaulted ceiling above.
Paul’s brow dipped. “You’re picking the wrong day to do this,” he said gravely.
A concerned look washed over Gary’s unshaven face. “Oh, I’m sorry, is there a time that would work out better for you, pumpkin’?”
“Just let us get our stuff and we’ll go,” Paul said.
“Boy, you best shut the hell up or your little play thing here is dead!” he said, drilling the gun into Wendy’s skull again, producing another ear-piercing shriek. “Now drop those belts!”
Dan and Paul swapped unsettled looks and reluctantly undid their belts and dropped them onto the blood-stained couch. Across the room, they got to their knees. Paul grimaced as a shard of glass from the broken lamp dug into his knee. He shifted his weight, watching Wendy shake like a leaf.
“You see,” Gary said, pulling the gun from Wendy’s head and waving it towards the ceiling. “I have what they call an autobiographical memory. I can recall every single day of my life. I can tell you what happened on that day, what I was doing and what day of the week I was doing it on.
Dan and Paul returned unregistered looks.
“And this morning, I suddenly remembered just how pretty this little thing really is,” he said softly, pulling Wendy to him by her hair. She gasped as he closed his eyes and smelled her hair.
Paul shifted and Gary drew the gun on him a heartbeat.
“Oh, you don’t believe me? Ask me the date of any historical significance,” he said.
Dan and Paul stared instead.
“Ask me a date!” he said, driving the gun back into Wendy’s head.
A shrill cry escaped her gaping mouth.
“What day did you get dropped on your head?” Paul asked dully.
Gary swung the gun on him again and Paul grinned.
Gary squinted at him. “Oh, I get it,” he said softly. “You wanna join your lady friend, don’t ya? Well, I can arrange that, lover boy.” Gary gripped the gun tighter and steadied himself for its powerful kick.
“When did Elvis die?” Dan quickly fired instead.
The gun and Gary’s large eyes descended upon Dan in a flash.
“Tuesday, August sixteenth of 1977,” Gary rapidly responded. “Why? Who wants to know?”
Dan’s brow furrowed. “What?”
Gary laughed. “Give me another one!”
Dan looked to Paul, then back to Gary. “When did the Guyana Tragedy happen?”
“Too easy! Saturday, November eighteenth, 1978! Another!” he demanded.
Dan scrunched his face up while Paul focused on the gun.
“How do we even know if you’re right or not?” Dan feebly asked.
Gary glared wildly at him for a moment. “Never thought of that. You dummies wouldn’t know your head from a hole in the wall too!” he said with a laugh. “Now, take your clothes off, darlin!” he shouted, shoving Wendy out into the middle of the room.
“What?” she gasped, nearly tripping.
“I’m tired of playin around with you!” he barked, aiming the gun at her face.
Shivering, she turned to Paul and Dan. Tears coursed down her red cheeks onto the wooden floor below.
“Do it or I’ll shoot them too!” He swung the gun over to them again.
“Okay!” she shrieked.
He trained the gun back onto her. “Then get to movin, dummy!”
Rigidly,
she took her shirt off with shaking fingers, revealing a red lace bra beneath. The shirt slipped to the floor as an evil grin crept across Gary’s scruffy face.
“That’s it...” he said softly, his breathing becoming deeper.
She turned to Paul and Dan again for help.
Paul didn’t take his eyes off Gary, waiting for the right moment to make a move and thinking he should’ve killed him when he had the chance.
Gary raised his eyebrows as if he had just heard Paul’s thoughts.
“Oh, you like butterflies too, huh?” he asked, noticing Wendy’s tattoo of the purple butterfly on her back. “I have a butterfly garden in my backyard,” he said proudly. “Bet you’d like it too. Monarchs and Swallowtails and Blue Morphos and Painted Ladies,” he said soothingly, like he was teaching a class to a bunch of grade schoolers. “They all stop by my place at sometime or other in the summertime. Even saw a Violet Morpho one time, like the one you got there, which is a real rarity around these parts,” he said, smiling.
Dan and Paul traded looks again and turned back to the neighbor. Paul figured he was crazy enough to pull the trigger.
“Now keep going!” Gary shouted.
Wendy jumped and grudgingly removed her belt.
“Is this what your wife would want?” Paul suddenly asked.
Gary’s eyes widened and he jerked the gun to him. His breaths quickened, and Paul knew he had found the nerve he was looking for.
“Janet? Wasn’t it?” Paul said.
The silence in the room buzzed in Paul’s thick head as he stared down the dark barrel looking back at him. He tried to shake the buzzing away without moving.
“Don’t you dare talk about her, boy” Gary hissed.
Paul raised his hands and slowly got to his feet.
Gary tensed. “Unless you wanna join your old lady up on that hill, you’ll get your butt back down!”
“Paul don’t!” Wendy wailed.
“Is this how you honor her memory?” Paul asked louder, ignoring Wendy and not breaking eye contact with the pudgy man as he stood up. Not caring if he lived or died anymore. The only thing he was sure of right now was that this wasn’t going to happen. Not on his watch.
“I hope you dug that grave large enough for two,” Gary said, flexing his fingers and gripping the gun tighter.
Wendy cracked him in the face with her belt and Gary screamed. Paul bum-rushed him and Gary fired a shot. Paul felt the bullet whiz past his head just before he tackled Gary to the ground. The pink gun went sliding across the shiny wooden floor. Paul quickly mounted Gary and drilled him with a mad flurry of fists to the face as Dan scurried across the room and secured the loose weapon.
Two of Gary’s teeth clattered out onto the dark wood floor.
“Pwease, stofff!” he cried, spitting blood into the air. “I was just flayin’ around! I wasn’t gonna do anything; I swear it!”
Paul got off him and grabbed Wendy’s gun from Gary’s belt while Dan kept Sophia’s little pink gun on Gary. Paul stood over Gary, pointing the black nine millimeter at his bloody face.
“Come on, man. I was juff havin’ a little fun. I’ve juff been so lonely since my wife died,” he sputtered, blood spilling out of his broken mouth and pooling onto the floor around his head.
“Those your last words, boy?” Paul calmly asked, his chest heaving as he stared into Gary’s eyes that we’re already turning black.
“Paul!” Dan said, the gun still on Gary. “Don’t do it!”
“What do you want to do, Dan? Call the cops?” he yelled over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off Gary.
“Well, you can’t just kill him!”
“Why not? He was going to kill us! He’s no better than those damn things out there!”
Dan took in heavy gulps of air, not sure what to say or do next. He looked from Paul back down to Gary.
“No, we are the cops now,” Paul said, glaring at Gary. “And the judge and the jury. Oh but don’t worry, you’re going to get your fair and speedy trial.”
“Listen... I won’t be a froblem no moe. I fromise. I juss wanna go on back ofer to my house and mind my own business,” Gary said through busted lips that were already getting fat.
“Oh now you wanna go home?” Paul asked smugly. “Because just a minute ago, that seemed like the last thing on your mind.” His index finger wrapped around the cool dark trigger.
“Flease, Faul I’m real sorry. I juss...”
“Paul, please!” Wendy said behind him, her arms folded across her chest. “You can’t do this!”
The gun shook in Paul’s hand. Sweat ran into his eyes. It stung but he barely noticed. He inhaled as a maniacal grim slid across his face. “Tell Janet I said hello.”
“Lifen, I’m sorry!” Gary screamed, tears pouring out his panic stricken eyes.
Paul swung the gun just to the side of Gary’s head and fired three shots. The deafening bursts echoed throughout the cavernous room. Splinters exploded around Gary, who wailed and jerked into a fetal position.
“Pleafe, I’m sorry!” he bawled.
Paul turned to Dan and told him to get some rope. He turned back to Gary as Dan headed out to the garage. “You’re gonna wish you could forget this day.”
Gary blubbered even louder.
Dan gave the rope one last solid tug and stood back up. “That oughtta hold him,” he said, eye balling Gary’s wrists, tightly bound around a metal load bearing pole in the empty three car garage.
“And to think, I had to sit there and listen to all of your crap about birds!” Wendy said, kicking Gary in the leg.
Gary howled on the oil stained cement floor. “I said I’m sorry!”
“What’re we going to do with him?” Dan asked.
Paul stared down at Gary, who gave him puppy dog eyes back.
A smile trickled across Paul’s face. “Just before it gets dark, we’ll tie him to a tree outside. Let those things have at him.”
Gary inhaled sharply, his eyes bulging from their blackened sockets. “Oh flease... Flease don’t.”
“Let’s go back inside,” Paul said, turning for the door.
Dan and Wendy sat in the kitchen, munching on some pretzels and chocolate chip cookies they had brought in from the cop car.
Paul sat on the toilet in one of the upstairs bathrooms, his handgun in his mouth. Tears streamed down his drawn face. With Sophia’s body buried out back and Gary tied up in the garage, things had become too real. Too much for one person. Without Sophia, That’s exactly what he was right now. One person. But he felt like even less.
The barrel’s cool metal tasted acidic. He swallowed with it still in his mouth and gagged. He pulled it out, swallowed, and stuck it back in.
He had been raised to believe that suicide would get you a one-way ticket to hell, but felt like, for whichever of his past transgression’s, he had already been sent. He didn’t care about what he was raised to believe anymore. No one said anything about this. He’d be damned if he would end up becoming the wandering tormented soul. Forever alone. Forever haunted.
The gun shook in his trembling hand, clattering against his teeth. Tears claimed his vision. He blinked them away and sniffled.
The brightly colored pirate ships on the neatly hung towels across from him made him drive the gun even harder into the roof of his mouth. His eyes dropped to the green bottle of shampoo, shaped like a mermaid, sitting on the tub’s edge. He scanned the vibrant pirate decals plastered across the aqua colored bathroom walls. Two toothbrushes, one red the other blue, poked out of a pirate mug on the sink’s counter top. The pirate wore an eye patch and a sneer on his bearded face.
Paul could taste his own blood.
The sensational kid’s bathroom gripped the slick wheel in his mind with white knuckles and steered new routes at will. He and Sophia would never have kids together. Not now. They’d never even have a dog or another Christmas together. Never steal another glance while reading books and sipping hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day.
Never share another story about their day together, laughing about something crazy that had happened.
He pushed the gun harder into his mouth and wrapped his finger around the trigger.
There would never be a beautiful little brown haired girl running around the house with Sophia’s warm eyes and embracing smile. One who hated bugs as much as she did or loved to sit in the sun, soaking up the day’s rays. She was gone and she wasn’t coming back. He would never smell her again. Touch her. Talk to her. See her. Breathe her. He didn’t even have a picture of her. Not one single picture.
The thought of this suddenly drove him more insane than the rest. Because as the cold steel of the gun scratched against his teeth and a myriad of walking corpses loomed outside, he suddenly couldn’t correctly assemble her opulent features in his mind. He closed his eyes and tried to focus, but her face was distorted and missing pieces. It came and went. He couldn’t breathe. Why hadn’t he thrown a photo album into their duffel bag before they had left their house? One stinking album?
His mind raced. He couldn’t see her face. It was a funhouse of mirrors in his head. He couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to breathe. He wanted to join her. Not fifty years from now. Not tomorrow. Today. Right now. There was nothing left here anyway. Literally nothing left.
He pulled the gun from his mouth, a silver rope of saliva stretched from the gun to his mouth like melted mozzarella cheese. He swallowed, breaking the string, and took a deep breath. He sat up straighter on the toilet and pushed the end of the gun into his right temple.
Tears and his chest were the only things that moved in the bathroom. There was only one way he could see her face again. Only one way that very minute. His index finger felt the engraved lines on the trigger. His eyes and nose gushed clear liquids. He needed her to be okay. This wasn’t supposed to happen. His chest clutched.
He dropped his gaze to the red bath mat where a gray and white shark was jumping out of the rugged blue waters below it. How could he take care of her if she wasn’t there to take care of? How could they go swimming at the beach if she wasn’t there to go swimming with? Just do it! his mind screamed. How could they go for a bike ride if she wasn’t there to go with?
COLD FAITH AND ZOMBIES Page 12