by Mark Tufo
“Mom, let go,” Nicole said in hushed tones. “There’s nothing here.”
A small scratching sound emanated from behind the cold drinks.
“It’s probably just the refrigerator kicking on,” Nicole said, more to convince herself than anything.
Tracy pointed to the un-lit lights overhead.
Nicole looked up and swallowed hard. “Yup, no power. I knew that.”
“Shhh…” Tracy more motioned than vocalized.
Nicole was not one to let a word go unspoken and was about to ask another question when the sound repeated itself. It was rhythmic and faint. There was no menace implied from the sound. All the same, Tracy was in no mood to hang around.
Tracy spun to face her daughter. “Let’s just grab a bunch of smokes and some sodas for the boys and get the hell out of here.”
“I’m with you on that, this place gives me the creeps and it’s starting to smell worse than outside. Mom, any particular brand you want me to get?”
“Yeah, all you can carry. I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a long time before Winston-Salem starts pumping more of these out, unless they start to market a brand for zombies. ‘Hey, you’re already dead, why not smoke?’ she tried for a feeble joke.
“That’s funny in a sick way,” Nicole said with a stiff smile.
“Even if we don’t smoke them, we’ll be able to trade with them. In a couple of days they might as well be sticks of gold.”
Nicole’s eyes sparkled. “Gold? Huh.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Nicole said as she went over and grabbed one of the two half-sized shopping carts.
“Good call,” Tracy said as she grabbed the lone remaining cart.
Both women were so busy ‘shopping’ that neither noticed when the door to the freezer section opened. In the shadows a lone figure stared out at them lustfully.
The image of meat, not the actual word, crossed what rudimentary intelligence the beast possessed. Forward it moved, always forward, always hungry, always in pursuit of its next meal. Life was easy, it would have thought if it had enough cognitive power to be self-aware. That was not the case, though.
Nicole had finished filling her cart and had gone out to the Jeep to fill it with her first load of booty. She couldn’t have been any happier if she had just found Davy Jones’ locker. Her previous dread was long forgotten as she reentered the store. She stopped in her tracks, her smile frozen on her face as she watched in horror. An undead nightmare stalked her unwitting mother.
“Mom!” Nicole shrieked.
Tracy dropped the case of Pepsi. Cans shot out in all directions. As they ruptured, sticky liquid arced through the air. Tracy was about to yell at her daughter for scaring her, but when she looked up and saw the sheer terror on her daughter’s face, she knew something was terribly wrong.
Nicole was pointing wildly, her finger thrusting like a woodpecker. Words stuttered in her mouth. “Z-Z-Z…”
Tracy got the point. There weren’t too many words that started with ‘z’ that could instill so much panic, unless of course a murderous zebra was loose in Denver and she was in the way of some succulent wild grass. Tracy spun around to face the threat. Her foot slipped on the newly-spilled Pepsi. Her left leg shot out wildly as she plummeted to the ground. The expression on the zombie’s face changed from happiness to confusion as it wondered where its meal had gone. It was a beat or two before its eyes tracked down and locked back on its prey.
Tracy had landed hard on her ass; the fall had not been broken in the least by the tiled floor. Tracy began to backpedal as the zombie once again began its forward progress. Nicole couldn’t get it out of her head that she wasn’t watching a scary movie on cable; her mind was searching for an escape.
Tracy had pushed back as far as she could, her back colliding with the fridge doors. Her feet sought a purchase that still eluded her on the slick floor. Tracy looked up at her one-shoed pursuer. Shapely legs gave way to a slender waistline and then to what could only be described as porn star breasts. Tracy could barely see around that mounding cleavage to the face mostly hidden beyond. What Tracy saw pissed her off to know end.
“Allison?” Tracy asked indignantly.
Allison-thing slowed her pursuit, not stopping, but definitely slowing, as if walking and processing this question were using up most of her operating system.
“Allison Pittman?” Tracy asked again.
The slender face that stared back at her looked confused. The long auburn hair that framed the green eyes was a little bedraggled, but for the most part, this might be the best looking zombie in the history of the genre, Tracy mused. “I would have hoped that your face got eaten, bitch!” Tracy yelled, as she was finally able to get her feet back under her with the help of the door handle behind her.
“Mom! What’s going on?” Nicole moaned.
The Allison-thing had stopped, almost as if she had had a fatal operating error.
“This thing,” Tracy yelled, “is the bitch that almost split up my marriage!” She glared venomously at the curvaceous corpse.
Right before Mike was laid off from his job, he and Tracy had been having some marital difficulties as most couples will during a marriage. These problems were exacerbated by the beauty of one conniving, manipulating bitch named Allison Pittman. Allison had become the ‘shoulder’ which Mike had leaned on. She listened intently, always saying the right thing, stroking his ego whenever it needed to be done. She was the perfect seductress. At first, Mike hadn’t noticed the subtle shift. They had been friends for almost three years, and in that time, they had told each other a myriad of private things. Mike could ‘see’ that Allison was one of the prettiest women he had ever laid eyes on. He was happily married and even if he wasn’t, he had talked to Allison long enough to know that her idea of a good time was to devour some poor man’s soul. Then, when he was just a dried up husk of himself, she would discard him like so much used trash. She was a modern day succubus. Still, she seemed to value their friendship. But when Allison had seen an opportunity, a chink in the marital armor of the Talbots, she did all in her powers to tear open an irreparable wound. It was like a disease with her.
She was an unhappy person and wanted everyone else to wallow in her emotional mire. Even as she loathed herself for her actions, she reveled in the thought of bedding Mike and then throwing it in the face of that bitch wife of his.
Mike had finally come to his senses and seen the ruse for what it was. It was almost disastrously too late, but the light of recognition had dawned on him when he was at Allison’s apartment. She had asked him if he would help her move some furniture from one room to the other. He had happily obliged, after all, that’s what friends were for, even if his higher psyche smelled a rat.
When he arrived there was a chilled bottle of wine on the table. Mike could see the shimmering candlelight emanating from Allison’s bedroom down the hallway, but the coup de grâce was the sheer negligee she was wearing. Mike had always known that she was a stunning looking woman, but this vision that greeted him at the door made him weak at the knees. Mike’s mouth dropped open as panic welled up.
He was at a crossroads in his life. Straight ahead lay his wife and kids. Sure, there was some cracked pavement and a pothole or two but it was a scenic, satisfying journey. All Mike could see if he took a hard right in his life with Allison was an ‘under construction’ sign: large orange traffic cones and glaring lit up warning signs that foretold of dangerous curves and hidden bumps that lined the street. That road could be fun for a mile or two. However, Mike was certain that it would end like so many roads he had seen Wile E. Coyote go down so many years before: with a huge sign in the middle of the road that told the driver ‘The End Was Near.’ That would be punctuated, of course, by a huge boulder lying just beyond it. All of this knowledge was too late for the Coyote because he had rocket skates on, but Mike had something that Wile E. didn’t: foreknowledge.
Mike
took one more look inside her apartment. Then, one long lingering look at the woman that stood before him. Later, he would tell himself it was because he had wanted to be absolutely sure what Allison’s intentions were. Then, without a word, he had turned and walked away. He knew if he had said something, anything, she would have had the perfect riposte and he would have caved. He would have stayed in the apartment and his life would have been irrevocably changed forever—and not for the better.
“Mike?” Allison had asked to his back. “What are you doing?” She had never been on this side of rejection and was not taking to the learning experience too kindly. “You’re turning this down?” she yelled as she flaunted her body.
Even without the condescending tone Mike knew not to turn around. To do so might have turned him to salt like Lot’s wife of Sodom and Gomorrah fame. Or worse yet, have him question what the hell he was doing.
“Go back to your wife!” she yelled. Her tremulous voice reaching volumes that brought out her neighbors, the better to play out this drama. “What are you, a fag?” she spat. Mike’s face burned as he realized he now had an audience to this spectacle.
Relief flooded through him as he finally reached his car door but was quickly diminished as he realized he would have to turn around to get in. Even from this distance, Allison’s beauty was unrivaled. The sheer hatred that etched her features only confirmed to Mike the wisdom of his decision. Mike’s dick, however, was unstirred by the power of higher reasoning and screamed its own words of hate and discontent at him.
“Definitely not a fag,” Mike said as he made some adjustments to himself, started the Jeep and got the hell out of Dodge.
Allison’s eyes burned holes into the back of Mike’s head as he made his hasty retreat. Her apartment shook from the force she had applied to her door as she slammed it home. It was from that point forward that she had begun to formulate a plan to get Mike dismissed from his job. She had hoped for a scandal of epic proportions and was disappointed when she was only able to manage a ‘job discontinuance.’ She had felt nothing close to remorse when she came to his office that final morning, only something akin to a fulfilling satisfaction.
“Last day?” she had laughed from his office door, a smug smile on her face.
Mike was fairly certain of Allison’s hand in this but had no desire to give her any more satisfaction than she was already deriving from it.
“Yeah, it’s time for a change, I’ve got some prospects back East that I’m looking forward to checking out.”
It was all a lie, Mike was deeply scared about losing his job, but to see her smirk come off her face for just a fraction of a second made it all seem worthwhile. Mike continued to load his last box with his belongings. Allison was irate as she pushed off from his doorframe. Revenge, unfulfilled. She stalked off, looking for her next victim.
Mike had told Tracy everything about that day, except the part about his traitorous penis. The liabilities of that disclosure far outweighed the benefits. Tracy had on more than one occasion wanted to confront Allison and let her know what she thought of her. Unlike Mike, Tracy was completely convinced that Allison had engineered Mike’s employment demise and had since wanted to exact revenge. Now the demon spawn stood before her, in all her deadly regal beauty.
“How does a zombie look so fucking good?” Tracy asked as she finally got to her feet.
“Mom?” Nicole was still bewildered, but finally took her mother’s words to heart and looked at the monster in front of them.
Except for some unkempt hair and a grayish sheen to her skin tone, the zombie was a knock out. For a second or two, Nicole wasn’t sure if they were being confronted by a monster or just a starving civilian. All pretense of a peaceful outcome was shattered as the Allison-thing reengaged her one-track mind. Her mouth opened wide, revealing bits and chunks of her last conquest. Like the door of an ancient mausoleum creaking open, the stench of death issued forward. Nicole brought her pistol up to bear, her hand shaking wildly as she pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Nicole waited impatiently for the terse spring of the recoil and the acrid smell of gunpowder. All that happened was her hand shook wildly from side to side and the acidic smell of decay flooded her senses.
“Shit!” Nicole yelled as she pulled the trigger again and again, but still nothing happened, not even the satisfactory slamming of the firing pin hitting home.
Tracy had not been stationary during this brief interlude; she had also brought her rifle to bear. The Allison-thing was so close that her mouth closed around the barrel of the rifle.
Gonna be tough to miss from this distance, Tracy thought with a certain sense of satisfaction.
“This oughtta take care of that shit-eating grin, BITCH!” Tracy yelled just as she pulled the trigger.
Yes, Allison-thing’s grin did expand, but not because of any hot lead injection. Tracy realized the gun wasn’t loaded. It was more useless than Viagra at a Promise Keeper’s Convention. Allison-thing was held at bay as the muzzle of the weapon pressed against the back of her throat. Tracy wanted to scream in rage and frustration…in revenge unfulfilled. Meanwhile, Nicole picked up the closest object that she could find. Tracy reeled as the flying box of condoms narrowly missed hitting the side of her head.
“Really! That’s the best that you could do?” Tracy shouted.
“Sorry, Mom. What are we gonna do?” Nicole shrieked, hysteria rising dangerously close to the surface.
“Go behind the register and see if there’s a bat or a crowbar or something to hit her over the head with,” Tracy said as she struggled with the Allison-thing.
The zombie still hadn’t figured out that to get to the meat it would have to dislodge from the bitter metal stick. The barrel was coming dangerously close to pushing through the back of her slender neck.
“There’s only a cane!” Nicole shouted from the register station.
“That’ll have to do. Hurry, I don’t know how much longer I can hold her back.”
Tracy was struggling under the relentless assault. The Allison-thing would never stop. Tracy knew that even as her arms ached with the strain of holding the undead bitch away from her. Tracy was proud as her daughter conquered her rising tide of fear and approached the zombie, cane upraised. Nicole swung with all her might, but between the mass of the cane and the lack of muscle Nicole possessed, the blow did little more than irritate her mother’s assailant. Again she raised the cane and struck. The zombie finally noticed that she was being attacked. It backed up, dislodging itself from the gun and turned her full attention on the small morsel of meat to her side. ‘Succulent’ was its vacant thought.
“Mom!” Nicole wailed as she dropped the cane and backed away.
Tracy’s arms were burning from the exertion of holding the zombie at bay. As the Allison-thing came loose, Tracy’s arms fell. The rifle in reality weighed only seven pounds, but right now it might as well have been seventy. She caught her breath as the zombie turned all of its attention to her daughter. Nicole was moving backwards, her eyes wild with fear. The look of sheer terror on her face got her mother moving.
“First my husband! Then me! And now you want my daughter?” Tracy screamed. She turned the rifle around so she was holding the barrel. “Well, you can’t have any of us! BITCH!” Tracy said, as she swung the beefy end of the stock with a strength and aim even Babe Ruth would have been proud of.
With contact came that disgusting sound that only a collapsing skull can make. Some compare it to the sound of a watermelon exploding after a three-story drop. In reality this isn’t even close. It is a much more visceral concussion. The sound assails the senses with the ire of a screeching cat in the dead of night. It is as repellent as a horde of spiders crawling on your head or getting your sternum poked or watching people chew with their mouths open. You get the point. It is a sound that is not meant for human ears.
The stock of the rifle nearly stuck in the caved-in cranium of the Allison-thing. As Tracy pulled the gun back, she was greeted with
an audible pop as the suction between bone, blood, and wood separated. Allison-thing’s head hung at an awkward angle. Her body stopped in midstride. It attempted to swivel its head to see its attacker but the bones in her delicate neck were in no better shape than her mashed in melon. Tracy heaved a cry of satisfaction and relief as the Allison-thing collapsed to the floor. Some violent twitching from her extremities kept Nicole and Tracy engrossed for a few long ghastly moments. Tracy had more expletives she wanted to shout at her downed adversary but was fearful if she opened her mouth only the contents of her roiling stomach would issue forth. Finally the Allison-thing lay still.
Tracy grabbed Nicole’s arm and pulled her through the exit. Not a word was said on the ride home, or ever again on the matter. Mike would learn of the cigarettes eventually, but when he questioned his wife, the stern look on her face kept him from pressing the matter. He didn’t see any reason to pry any further. Women were a complete and utter mystery to him, but he knew enough about when to keep his mouth shut.
Chapter 15
Journal Entry – 13
* * *
It was not difficult to see the source of Justin’s fever. The scarlet wound on his cheek screamed for attention. The sight of a thousand ravenous zombies could not compete with the fright one sick boy placed into me. If Paul hadn’t been sitting on the toilet, I would have used it for some dry heave practice. It was then that I finally REALLY noticed my lifelong friend.
“Paul?” I asked. I had to blink and rub my eyes. How cliché is that?
“Hey, buddy,” Paul said, his voice strained. He was feeling extremely guilty for his part in this progressing drama. Paul and Mike had talked occasionally, usually in drunken stupors, about what they should do in the event of a disaster. Now in Paul’s defense, most of these scenarios involved terrorist attacks, not zombie infestations. But after much debate and loud obnoxious rants, it was agreed upon that Mike’s house was easier to defend and had more supplies including armament. At the first sign of trouble, Paul was supposed to get his ass over to Mike’s, but he had let indecision rule…and that had threatened the lives of his nephews. He knew Mike would have a hard time ever forgiving him this transgression.