by Mark Tufo
“What the fuck….” I yelled, but the rest of my expletive sentence died on my lips as I saw the terror in my fifteen-year-old son’s face. Nothing scares Travis—not even me, and I’m a former Marine. Hell, just last week I watched him tear a phone book in half, and not of some little town in Nebraska either. The kid was starting middle linebacker on his freshman team, and he was scaring the hell out of the starter on the JV team. The boy didn’t care who was coming after him or who he was going after. Well I guess that’s a lie…they have to be living.
He never looked up when I came down the stairs. “Mom, lock the door!” he yelled. “LOCK IT!” he screamed again.
“I can’t figure out the lock!” my wife yelled back.
I didn’t know whether I should laugh or be worried. To be honest, it was a funny scene: My wife frantically trying to lock the security door with no luck while my linebacker son, who normally towers over his mother, was cowering behind her. I couldn’t see out the door from my vantage point. When the front door is open it blocks off the landing, so I rushed to push it closed, forcing my wife and son away from the security door. I had no sooner shut the heavy gauge steel front door when I heard the glass pane in it shatter. (We had to move to a townhome in a less-than-desirable neighborhood after I lost my job, and security was a big issue. We even had bars across all the lower windows, THANK GOD!
I was a millisecond away from opening the door and severely chewing the ass off some neighborhood punk who was going to cost me a hundred dollars to repair the glass.
“NO!” my wife and son yelled in unison. My wife slammed up against the door to reiterate her point.
“What the hell is going on?” My adrenaline was pumping. My pet peeves were throbbing—all seventeen of them.
“Look out the peephole,” my wife whispered.
I put my eye to the hole expecting to see some little shit gang-bangers out there tearing things up. What I saw was a tongue.
“I see a tongue! Some asshole is licking my peephole,” I said, and then I laughed a little bit. That sounded a little gross even to me.
My wife didn’t see the humor, her face still hadn’t regained her color, and my son looked like he was starting to hyperventilate.
My wife told me to look out the window, but she made no move to look with me. I’m not the brightest bulb on the string but even I knew at this point that something was really messed up. I put on my best male bravado and stepped over to the window. I rolled up the shade, and to this day I don’t know how it happened, but I simultaneously felt my stomach lurch into my throat and my balls fill in the abandoned spot my belly left behind. There had to have been at least a couple of dozen dead people milling about our communal lawn. Okay, so they weren’t dead in the traditional way, they were still moving, but they were dead all the same.
My quasi-nightmare dream had come true. ZOMBIES were afoot. Now, I know this is a sick fantasy, so bear with me. I had always wished for this. I had watched nearly every zombie movie, from the early Dawn of the Dead, with the slow shuffling brain eaters, to the newer 28 Days Later flicks with the fast, semi- intelligent brain eaters. Hell, I even liked the films that made fun of the style, like Shaun of the Dead and Boy Eats Girl. If it involved a zombie, I was game.
Now back to the slightly insane part of my fantasy. I guess if you get right down to the guts of it, no pun intended, it would be a way to escape the responsibilities (and boredom) of everyday life. Forget the 9-to-5 grind, the mortgage, and clothes shopping, it would just become all about survival of the fittest. I had been planning for this day for almost twenty-five years of my life. I know, pathetic, right? I had a gun safe full of multiple caliber rifles and pistols. I told my wife it was for hunting. I’ve never even BEEN hunting. Either she was REALLY gullible, or she was just turning the other cheek. We all have our own crosses to bear. I’ll be honest though, my fantasy involved more the slower, shuffling zombies than the ultra-fast Resident Evil kind. Like it or not, it appeared that IT had finally happened. I closed the blinds as fast as I could, hoping that I didn’t attract any undue attention. My brain was in overdrive.
“Tracy!” I yelled a little louder than I meant to. I wrestled with my emotions and tried to calm my flittering heart. “Turn on the TV, please.”
She was still in a little bit of shock. “Talbot (our family name), this is no time for ESPN,” she responded waspishly.
“You know, I would like to know how the Giants did tonight, but I was hoping for the news,” I answered sarcastically.
“Oh,” was all she could muster as the thin film of terror began to peel away from her vision.
“Travis.” He didn’t move. “Travis!” I said a little louder.
He finally broke away from his mother’s back, confusion and fear still warring for control over his features.
“Go look out the back window. If our deck is clear, I want you to make sure the back gate is locked.” Now before you go getting all out of sorts at me, our back yard is about as big as most people’s master bathrooms. The kid would be perfectly safe as long as the gate was still closed and our yard hadn’t yet been breached.
But still Travis looked at me with pleading eyes, not believing that his own father would put him back in harm’s way.
“Oh for fuck’s sake! I’ll do it!” I sighed disgustedly.
The relaxation on his face was clearly perceptible. I should take it easy on the kid, he was shaken up, and I was going to need his help before this was all over with. I peered out back through our vulnerable French doors. We hadn’t been able to afford security bars for them yet.
“Oh crap,” I muttered, I could see the gate was open. Nothing to it but to do it…right? If I die in a towel I’m gonna be pissed, though. I was able to tell in less than a heartbeat that our postage stamp-sized back deck didn’t have any unfriendlies on it. But what I wasn’t able to discover from my present vantage point was if anything (or anyone) was on the other side of the gate. It was a full picket gate and did not afford me the luxury of seeing through to the other side. I opened one of the French doors and immediately wished I hadn’t. The smell was beyond putrid; it smelled like sour milk mixed with a hint of steaming broccoli (which I hate) and a healthy dose of shit all stirred in for the fun of it.
The walking dead weren’t in my back yard, but they were close. If they came through the gate now, this was going to be a short novella. My towel caught on the next-to-useless excuse for a lock on the door. I didn’t even stop to grab it. Somehow it seemed nobler to die naked like a savage than with a terry cloth towel around my waist. I moved as quickly as I dared when it happened! I felt something warm and squishy give way under my right foot. My first thought was BRAINS, but then the unmistakable smell of fresh dog shit wafted up to my nostrils. I had to vigorously defend against the revulsion that welled up in me. I so wanted to vomit, but I pushed on. I was two steps away from the gate when I heard the telltale shuffling. Did the smell of the shit draw them, or were they already close? I threw myself against the gate, quashing down my rising panic, frantically trying to drive the lock home.
You know when you see this crap in the movies, you are always like, “Oh come on, just lock the gate, how effen hard can it be?” Well I’ll tell you. When your heart is going like a trip-hammer and your arms are shaking like you’re at ground zero on the San Andreas Fault during The Big One, it’s unbelievably hard. I felt an impact as something or somebody pushed against the gate from the other side. It wasn’t a concerted effort, which was a good thing; I might have abandoned ship and headed screaming for the house. It was one good push that sent the gate about six inches my way. I pushed back so hard that I almost pushed the gate through the backstop, which obviously would have caused its own set of problems. I was able to drive the bolt home, but I didn’t hang around long to revel in my victory.
“Talbot, get in here!” my wife screamed.
MAN, I said to myself, doesn’t she realize I almost died out here? Yeah, I was being a little melodramat
ic, but I think I had an appropriate excuse. I was about to ask her “what,” when she pointed to the television. The picture was horrible. I knew I shouldn’t have switched from cable to satellite. Why was I getting lost in the details when the situation was so serious? Maybe it was my way of coping, who knows. I tried to minor in psychology in college but couldn’t stand it. The newscaster looked like she had been dragged out of bed to do the report. She probably had been.
“…By all accounts it appears the threat (‘Oh for God sake’s lady! Call it like it is, a spade is a spade already’) is overwhelming our ground troops! Estimates have it that nearly a third of our country is already in enemy hands and spreading fast. Do not let one of the infected scratch or bite you. In a matter of hours the virus will kill and then reanimate you. If you or someone you know becomes infected, the only way to stop them is to destroy the brain. Do not approach them. Do not try to reason with them. The worst is yet to come.” She continued, “It also seems the pathogen is airborne!” (My heart skipped!) “Even if someone were to die of means other than direct contact with the infected, they also will become reanimated within a few hours of their death.”
“What does that mean?” my wife asked. I knew she knew the answer, but she was dealing with her shock in the only manner she knew how…denial.
“It means we’re in a lot of trouble,” I answered solemnly.
“What the hell is that smell?” she snapped as she also jolted out of her stupor. She was looking directly at the source of the stink. I wanted to blame it on the zombies, but I had Henry’s crap halfway up my ankle. Henry was our English bulldog, and I loved him to death. Before this, I would have even said his shit didn’t stink, but I can now tell you that is a lie. Gotta love English bullies, the world was going to hell in a hurry and he hadn’t even left the comfort of his dog bed yet to see what was happening.
My son Travis still seemed fogged over, so I wanted to give him something to do to keep his mind and body occupied.
“Travis, go load the guns,” I said.
“Which ones?” he countered.
My heart leapt when I realized he was rebounding. “All of them,” was my reply. Just as quickly as my feeling of elation rose, the spirit of dread brought me crashing back. “Where’s Justin?” I asked my wife.
Justin is my middle child. He’s nineteen and had recently moved home after a brief stint living with his sister up in the town of Breckenridge. He’s a good kid with a huge heart. He doesn’t always prioritize his life correctly, but then again, how many teenagers do? I needed him here, not only because he’s our kid and I wanted to make sure he was safe, but he’s a hell of a shot, and I needed the third man of our fire team present and accounted for. Preparing like I had been for the aforementioned zombie invasion entailed taking my two boys to the shooting range as often as possible. I made sure that they were well versed in the ins and outs of handling firearms correctly, no matter the caliber. They could shoot everything from my illegal (shhh) fully automatic M-16, to my small cannon (my 30.06), to the various .22 caliber rifles and pistols I owned. I needed my flank men!
My wife’s face dropped; the fear in her eyes made her forget the rancid excrement I was leaving on her carpet. The thump against the front door steeled her resolve. She moved back from the abyss she was heading toward.
“He’s at work,” she answered. Work was Walmart, and it was exactly three-point-seven miles from our house. I knew, because on most days I drove his ass to and from. He didn’t have his license yet, refer back to the part about his prioritizing skills.
“Travis, how’s it coming with the guns?” I hollered up the stairs.
“Almost done, Dad,” came his reply.
The front door shuddered again, but it wasn’t going to give anytime soon. I slipped the dead bolt in place anyway. “I’m going to get some clothes on.” I grabbed my wife’s shoulders and swung her towards me so she was staring at me. “We’re going to get him,” I added reassuringly.
She nodded in agreement and muttered the same words she said on our wedding day as part of her vows: “Uh-huh.”
“Hon.” I held her firm. “Get some food together.” She looked at me questioningly. “We’re going to get Justin and then, I hope, come back home. But I want to be prepared. Go get the boxes of MREs.” (The military had developed these Meals Ready to Eat; they taste like dirt, but pack all the caloric intake one needs to fend off the undead. Or does the word ‘undead’ refer to vampires? Okay, okay, so the zombies would be the ‘living’ dead, is that better?) “Hon, you’ve got to come back from Traceyville.”
We sometimes joked when my wife had a blonde moment or just lapsed out of our reality into her own made up one. Life came back into her eyes, and just like that, she was back. She had a mission: saving one of her offspring. Don’t ever get between a mother and her young.
“I’m gonna get some clothes on and then we’re going, okay?” I questioned.
I was a little worried about her, but I didn’t need to be; she was back and nothing was going to deter her…unless of course the damn lights went out. The TV announcer was now telling us we should stay in our homes. ‘No screaming eagle shit!’ I was about to tell her, when she was cut off in mid-sentence as the electricity failed. Tracy latched on to me. Only the occasional thumping on our front door broke the sudden quiet. Those Girl Scouts are persistent, kept flashing across my brain plate. Hey, nobody said I didn’t go to Mikeyville occasionally.
“Dad?” Travis half-moaned from upstairs. I snapped back; if not for me, then for him.
“I’m here, bud, give me two seconds. I’m going to get some candles and a flashlight.” I’d been meaning to get that circuit breaker fixed, but I wouldn’t be going to Home Depot tonight.
“Umm, could you hurry?” he asked. I could hear the panic welling up in him.
There’s something to be said about being a survivalist. Most people think we’re nuts. Hell, I think that and I’m one of them. We’re always preparing for what we think is an eventuality; Doomsday, the end of the world, invasions from another planet, when the odds say the worst that might happen is an errant tornado. But one thing about always preparing for the worst is that, well, we’re always prepared. Isn’t that the Boy Scout motto? I thought. I hauled myself back from Mikeyville again and turned back to my troops.
“Travis, next to the left hand side of the gun safe, on the wall near the floor, you should see a small light. That’s a flashlight, grab it and I’ll be right up. I want to get your mother some light, too.”
“Got it!” he answered triumphantly. I could hear the tremor in his voice relax as I saw the beam of light cut a swath down the staircase.
I padded upstairs with my own candle. Tracy went to the basement to grab the grub. On the bed, Travis had all the weapons laid out; locked and loaded. There was the M-16, then my ‘elephant killer,’ the 30.06. Oh, stop your PETA protests, I already told you I don’t hunt. I continued my visual inventory: Two shotguns, a .22 caliber rifle and a pistol, my .357 Magnum, my 9mm Glock, and my .17 caliber lever-action rifle. I had over a thousand rounds for each weapon, and all I could think was, I should have bought more. Survivalism is addictive. You can never have too much ammo.
The front door thumped again. “BITCH!” I said as I grabbed the .357 off the bed. I ran downstairs and peeked through the spy hole, thankful that there was a full moon tonight; although, was I? Was that the reason the dead were walking around? I didn’t know. All I could see was the douche bag that was still licking my peephole, and that still sounded a little disturbing, even to me.
I held the Magnum up to the eye slot and pulled the trigger. The explosion was deafening in our quiet home. I looked through the now gaping hole in my front door. Sir Licks-A-Lot was dead for the second time around, and he was not going to be getting back up any time soon. He lay on his side on my front porch; the back of his head was just gone. The bullet had entered his mouth and had blown away most of his teeth and that god-awful tongue. There was some
blood and a little gristle hanging out the back of his melon, but that was it. His compadres did not even take note of his passing, but the noise sure got their attention. I hastily opened the front door and kicked Sir Licks’ foot out of the way so I could shut the security door. Even though the glass pane was gone, the door would still afford some much needed protection against the zombies’ unwelcome advances.
The noise of the gun might have the natives restless, but the sight of fresh meat stirred them into a frenzy. The shuffling turned into an ambling and the ambling turned into a slow trot, eh maybe more like a power walk. Okay, they weren’t going to break any land-speed records, but this wasn’t the slow shuffle the visionary George A. Romero envisioned in his documentaries.
I had just kicked the zombie’s dead...undead...re-dead? foot out of the way and shut the door, much more easily engaging the lock this time around, when the first of my uninvited guests slammed up against the metal casing; the bars were intact, but that did nothing to stop the impact of the foul odor that he gave off. I slammed the front door shut and only then realized I had just killed my first zombie and I was buck naked.
Chapter 2
Journal Entry – 2
* * *
On hearing the shot, Travis had run halfway down the stairs, 12-gauge at the ready (bless his heart). “Everything all right, Dad?”
“Everything’s cool, finish packing up,” came my measured response.
Tracy yelled from the bottom of the cellar stairs, “What’s going on?”