by Mark Tufo
“Vere are you boys going?” Igor Drudarski, the guard, asked. Igor was a fifty-something, fat Russian man who had emigrated over from the former Soviet Union some twenty years previously. He had not lost a hint of his former accent or his profound ability to drink vast quantities of vodka. The sour stench permeated through the truck as he looked over the boys and all the weapons they carried. Tommy smiled back, greedily stuffing a blueberry Pop-Tart into his mouth.
“We have Pop-Tarts?” Travis asked softly.
“Weef did,” Tommy smiled weakly back.
Justin leaned over Brendon a little and subsequently closer to the stink of Igor’s breath. This morning was not working out well at all for his olfactory senses, which had just recently gotten over the assault at the bathroom.
“Mike Talbot asked us to follow him with some more fire power,” Justin said, with a little more conviction in his voice than he felt.
“You are his boys, no?” Igor asked.
“That’s right,” Justin answered.
“He already had four people with him, what does he need you for?” Igor asked.
“Probably just guard duty,” Travis threw in hastily. Justin silently thanked his brother.
Igor looked at all of them skeptically. “They left over fifteen minutes ago. You know how to get to the armory, yes?”
“Oh yeah,” Justin responded, perhaps a little too eagerly.
Igor pulled his head out from the driver’s side window, not convinced he was receiving the truth, but his main function was to keep people out, not in. He waved the bus driver to pull forward and out of the way.
Be safe, dah?” Igor yelled out. Brendon waved in response. The bus driver closed the gate, not waiting for Igor’s hand signal.
“Which way do I go when I get to Havana?” Brendon asked Justin.
“Uh…right,” Justin told him, taking just a fraction of a second longer than appropriate to give the answer.
“You know the way, right?” Brendon asked doubtfully.
“Uhhh, most of the way,” Justin said meekly.
“Justin!” Brendon bellowed. “You are going to get us all screwed, this is going to be an all risk and no reward venture! Your sister’s going to kill me, not including what Mike’s gonna do when he realizes I let you talk me into this harebrained scheme. It’s not like we can ask somebody for directions. ‘Hello Mr. Zombie, have you eaten any one lately named Paul Ginner? No? Then can you tell us how we might get there before you? What? You can’t talk?’” Brendon was working himself up into a frenzy. He pulled into a now out-of-commission gas station so he could turn around.
“What are you doing?” Justin screamed in panic.
“We’re going back before we get in any deeper over our heads,” Brendon shot back.
Tommy had finished getting the final few crumbs out of his Pop-Tart bag when he spoke up. “I know the way.”
Brendon and Justin turned to look at Tommy. There was not a hint on his features that he was speaking anything but the truth. Brendon sighed and got back on the road heading in the general direction of Paul’s house.
Travis was busy looking in Tommy’s knapsack for a wayward Pop-Tart. The quartet passed three cars on their way. All three were packed with people and provisions. All the people in those cars looked haunted, harried, and in a rush. Not one of them so much as addressed the boys’ presence with even a nod.
“They sure seem in a hurry,” Travis said, putting into words what everyone was thinking. Well, maybe not Tommy. He had somehow pulled out another Pop-Tart from the bag Travis had previously checked. Travis added for Tommy’s ears only, “Do you have a secret panel in there or something?” Tommy just smiled, strawberry goo plastered to his teeth.
“Need any help with that?” Travis asked. Tommy broke off half. Travis couldn’t have been any happier than if he had won a shopping spree at Game Stop.
“You’re gonna need it,” Tommy said cryptically. Travis almost immediately lost all pleasure in the Pop-Tart.
Tommy led them unerringly to their destination. When they were about to make their final left turn onto Paul’s street, Tommy told them they “might want to park here.” Brendon didn’t question him at all as he pulled the car over and shut the engine off in the hopes of not attracting any undue attention.
“Prob’ly didn’t want to do that just yet,” Tommy said. When he didn’t clarify, nobody asked for any further information, not knowing exactly what they would be trying to clarify.
As Brendon opened the door, the telltale redolence of the dead blasted through the car like an Arctic breeze through a windbreaker. What little flavor Travis’ Pop-Tart had maintained had now embittered. The next few minutes were spent securing weaponry and stashing all extra ammo into as many free pockets as possible while still being able to move under the weight.
All fours boys slowly walked the twenty-five yards to the corner of Paul’s street. The smell was intensifying. What was more disturbing was the incessant sounds of the dead. There was no talking, only the loitering shuffle. There was no laughter, only the constant sound of bodies maneuvering for position. There was no human sound, so to speak; there were the plaintive sounds only the dead can make.
Brendon peeked his head around the last privacy fence that marked the delineation between safety and demise. The other three waited expectantly a few feet behind. Paul lived at the end of a cul-de-sac, no more than a hundred yards long. What Brendon saw almost made him turn tail and run. It looked as if the world’s most successful block party was raging. There had to have been at least three hundred lost souls wandering around; most looked as if they had a purpose. Some, however, looked lost and were somehow relieved to be among their own. Brendon, of course wouldn’t swear to that, it was just a feeling he had perceived. He pulled his head back before any of those errant demons had a chance to spot him.
“Uh, I’m not so sure about this, guys,” Brendon said in hushed tones. “There have to be at least a couple hundred zombies. Most of them are clustered around one house. So we might be able to sneak by, but I wouldn’t want to bet our lives on it.” Which of course they would be.
Justin asked, “Are they focused on the last house on the right, by any chance?”
“How did you…?” Brendon knew the answer before he finished. “That’s Paul’s, right?”
“Of course,” Travis threw in sarcastically.
As if on cue, the three boys looked to Tommy to see if he had any insight into their situation, but he merely smiled back. The sporadic firing of a small caliber pistol coming from the cul-de-sac interrupted their contemplation. Travis ran up to the fence to hazard a look; Justin and Brendon followed. What they saw both lifted their spirits and simultaneously weighed heavy on their hearts. At the apex of the house was the distinctive outline of Paul’s wife Erin. It appeared that she had knocked out the attic vent and was taking some ill-aimed shots at some of her besiegers. The boys were happy she was alive but saddened at the thought of the impossibility of a rescue attempt.
“So obviously a frontal assault is out of the question.” Brendon stated the obvious.
Travis spoke up. “Let’s go through the back yards on this side of the street and see if we can spot a way in from that vantage point.”
“It’s not really the way we want to go,” Justin said nervously.
“You know what I mean,” Travis answered.
“That’s going to put us about ten feet away from the nearest zombie,” Brendon said. “Will they be able to smell us from that distance?”
“My dad asked the same thing when we went to get Justin. I think they can. But if they are focused on something, it takes a lot to get their attention away from the first thing,” Travis said optimistically.
“Let’s hope your dad’s right,” Brendon added.
The brothers nodded in unison. Tommy was busy pulling wayward gobs of Pop-Tart off his shirt and popping them into his mouth.
“All right, let’s fall back to the rear of these houses,�
�� Brendon said, taking charge. He didn’t like the position at all.
The boys moved away from the zombie infestation to traverse behind the houses. Once they got to the house directly across from Paul’s, they quickly climbed over the six-foot privacy fence. Brendon had thought that they might have to leave Tommy behind because of the fence, but he was surprisingly agile and seemed to have the least amount of problem getting over.
“Must be all the sugar,” Brendon mumbled mirthfully to himself.
The boys moved to the front yard, still under concealment of the fence. The smell was unbearable. Even Tommy, who seemed immune to it, stopped eating.
“What’s Paul’s back yard like?” Brendon asked Travis.
“It’s heavily sloped down and away from the house, but it won’t do us any good,” Travis answered.
Brendon cautiously looked over the fence. From his vantage point he could tell that the fence that led to Paul’s back yard had been destroyed, most likely from the press of dead flesh against it. The fence hadn’t stood a chance. “Yeah, it’s as likely as not to have as many deaders in the back as in the front.”
Over the preternatural quiet that enshrouded the neighborhood it was easy to hear Erin shout to Paul that she had seen someone over at the Henderson’s house. Paul crowded Erin out of the small opening to take a look. Brendon had quickly jumped down before any zombies could see him, but apparently zombies suffered the same affliction that troubled dogs, they couldn’t follow a pointed finger. And that was exactly what Erin was doing.
“I don’t see anything,” Paul said.
“He was right over there by the fence, you must have scared him away,” Erin answered.
“Yeah I’m sure it had nothing to do with the meat bags below,” Paul responded sardonically.
Travis climbed up the fence when he realized the zombies weren’t turning to investigate Erin’s claims.
“See, there he is again!” Erin said excitedly. “Wait, that’s not the same person.”
“Travis?” Paul said softly, then a little louder “Travis, is that you? Wait don’t answer! Just nod.”
Travis nodded.
“Is your dad here?” Paul asked as hope surged in him. If anyone could get his wife and him out of this jam it would be Mike. The guy had a penchant for getting out of tight jams, the Marine Corps had only added to that legacy. When Travis shook his head no, Paul was dismayed. “How many of you are there?”
Travis held up four fingers. Paul couldn’t imagine that Mike would send his boys alone to get him. He prayed that Mike hadn’t died trying to save him.
“Where’s your dad?” Paul asked. Travis shrugged his shoulders. There was only so much the boy could answer with body movements, but the fact that he didn’t look too upset told Paul volumes.
“Any ideas?” Paul asked. Travis again shook his head no.
“I’ve got an idea,” Brendon said from below. Travis held up one finger and mouthed ‘Wait One’. Paul was left to ponder what this meant as Travis ducked back down off the fence.
“You three wait here. When the coast is clear get Paul and Erin and get back to the car,” Brendon said as he began to move back towards where they had come from.
“Any chance you could be more specific?” Travis asked Brendon’s back, but he was already out of earshot of Travis’ whisper.
A few moments later, Travis got his answer. Brendon thought valor was highly overrated as he hesitantly walked out into the middle of the junction between Wheelspoke Avenue and Lacey Street.
“Couldn’t it have been something a little more noble, like OK Corral Place and Okinawa Way?” he muttered to himself.
At first, not one zombie took notice of the interloper. Brendon had aspirations that maybe he was somehow invisible to them. However, when he cleared his throat as if he wanted to reap attention in a loud auction house, he was rewarded beyond his wildest dreams. A zombie no more than twenty yards away turned to look at this newest nutrient food bag. The lone zombie started its hunt. Brendon felt like a fox about to be released. Although his body was moments away from bolting, his mind was holding steady. Pulling one whole zombie away from the fray was not the distraction Brendon was looking for. He aimed his gun in on the unaccompanied zombie and neatly removed the mass of its head from the rest of its offending body with a loud explosion. Most of the zombies were so tightly packed in around Paul’s house that turning around was an industrious undertaking. It was only after a fair portion of the zombie crowd had peeled off to pursue this new quarry that the rest were able to swing into a position where they could see what the fuss was all about. In the rudimentary works that passed as thoughts in the zombies, the dinner bell had been sounded. ‘Meat for me’ would have been the vocalization of their thoughts if that were a possibility.
“Hey, zombies! Dinnertime!” Brendon yelled in encouragement as he punctuated his point with some well-aimed shots.
A few zombies went down, a couple even stayed down, but it was the typical drop in the bucket. Brendon did not immediately turn and run as more and more zombies took note of his presence and began to come at him. He laid down shots almost on top of each other. If Travis hadn’t known better, he would have thought Brendon had somehow obtained a fully automatic weapon with that rapid rate of fire. Brendon was holding his ground as best he could, only falling back a step or two when he should have been running as if hell itself were chasing him. In a few more seconds his window of escape would close but he was trying to get most, if not all, the zombies to come his way. Travis had knocked out a knothole in the fence and was just about to lay down some suppressive fire to help him when Brendon finally understood he could not hold his ground anymore.
“That wasn’t much of a plan,” Travis said to Tommy. Tommy nodded in agreement.
Justin looked through the hole and noted that, although it wasn’t much of a plan, it had worked to near perfection. Travis and Justin could count on both their hands the remaining zombies. Of those that were left, Erin was doing her best to dispatch most of them. But unless the zombie’s brains had somehow migrated to their feet, she wasn’t doing much good. Most of the zombies that were left would now have a pronounceable limp, but they wouldn’t be able to collect disability insurance any time soon. Travis, Justin, and Tommy walked through the front gate, the Mossberg and the Winchester blazing hellfire. If the zombies were capable of any other thoughts besides ‘meat,’ they would have known to leave this place of re-death so they could salvage what remained of their ravaged bodies in order to attack at another time. The last zombie had fallen long before Travis and Justin stopped firing. It took Tommy’s gentle hands on their shoulders and a couple of words to get their attention; they had been deep in the grip of battle fever.
“I found another Pop-Tart,” Tommy said as he flashed the foil bag in front of Travis’ eyes.
Justin turned to Tommy. “Were you whistling?”
Tommy grinned. “Yeah, it was the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.”
Justin laughed. But the killing fog had not cleared from Travis’ eyes. It took a giant bear hug from his godfather that threatened to cut off his oxygen supply to do the trick. Erin came out next; she was busy reloading her pistol.
“Holy shit, boys, it’s great to see you!” Paul pulled Justin into the growing mass hug, Tommy stood to the side with his hands clasped behind his back, casually kicking his left foot into the ground. He looked like a puppy in a pet store window.
“I don’t know who you are, kid, but get your ass over here,” Paul said with a beaming smile, doing his best to stretch his arms across the three of them. Erin completed the circle on the far side.
“My name’s Tommy,” Tommy said happily, his face buried in Justin’s back.
“Boys, I’d love to stay like this a while longer but I want to get the hell out of here,” Paul said as he disentangled himself from the conglomeration. “So what’s the plan?”
Justin and Travis merely looked at one another. Paul sensed their
uneasiness.
Travis spoke first. “Well, you… um, kinda know as much of the plan as we do.”
“Oh crap, we’ve got to get back in the house then,” Paul said apprehensively.
“Paul, we can’t. We’ve only got enough supplies for a day or two at most,” Erin reminded him.
Paul’s stress level was as stretched as high as it could be. Justin spoke before it snapped. “Our truck is at the end of the street. Brendon should be back in a couple of minutes. As soon as he gets here we’ll head back home.”
Paul and Erin looked longingly back at their home, confident in the fact they would never see it again. “All right, let’s get going,” Paul said as he wrapped his arm around his wife.
A few moments later, everyone was huddled around the car. Tommy was the sole occupant. The rest stayed outside in an uneasy silence. It seemed more prudent to be able to leave in a moment’s notice rather than be imprisoned in the SUV. Only Tommy felt otherwise.
“Maybe we should get your car, Uncle Paul,” Justin said. The waiting was plainly beginning to unnerve him.
“Not such a good idea,” Paul answered. “I coasted home on fumes the night before this all happened. I would have gone to your place before we got surrounded if I had a chance to fill the damn tank. I just figured I’d have all the time in the world to do it.” Just as Paul was done rebuking himself, a single shot rang out. It sounded distant. Everyone swung in the general direction of the sound.
“That was Brendon,” Justin surged toward the noise.
“The captain is back!” Tommy yelled from the backseat.
Paul looked questioningly before Justin answered sheepishly. “Captain Obvious, you get it?”
“Oh,” Paul forced a strained smile. He appreciated the humor, just not under the present circumstances.