by Ron Tufo
It was the greatest of great weeks. Felt like the damn Kennedys. Playing autumn flag football out in the yard (I still got to run behind Squeak’s blocking, although after a few beers it was more like a waddle), and eating at long outdoor tables with everyone there. All the youngish kids ran around laughing and challenging each other to larger feats of kid-dom. Who could climb the highest? Who could run the fastest? Who could scarf the most chicken legs off the table without getting caught by Grampa Tony? Funny thing was, he always knew what they were up to but got more fun out of it than his grandchildren did. Did they never realize his generation used to play the same game? We chugged many beers and told all the family stories over again long into the evening. It was also the last time we would all be together, but I am glad I didn’t know that while it was happening. Everyone who flew in for the festivities had great memories to take with them when they left.
Chapter 3
And so it begins. Sooner than we had hoped, later than we had expected. - Ron Talbot
Squeak had become foreman of the compound construction by skill and default. The man had building talents I never knew about. In a couple of weeks, he had this mostly unskilled crew completing projects that would have taken a couple of months without him.
In hindsight, the only thing I can say is: “Thank you Squeak, I think you saved us all.”
Bunkers got built and stocked. The girls had to make multiple runs to nearby larger towns and cities to stock them adequately. Gary, Mark, and dad had an absolute blast buying out the local Maine Guns and Ammo store. My American Express Gold Card had the numbers smoked off it by the time they were done. Gary took a pic on his Smartphone as they left the store. The electronic sign out front now read: Sold Out/Gone Fishin’. I don’t think he and dad actually bought out the whole store (geez, I hope not), but in true Maine fashion, the owner felt he had done enough business for the week, so he closed up shop and went off to enjoy himself.
Our efforts now turned to enlarging our defensible perimeter to include our neighbor Wink’s buildings too. This was beginning to be a challenge, as we now sprawled over one hundred acres.
Wink was a boon and a blessing as we started to shape the Cain’s Pond compound a few years ago. A former Army Ranger staff officer and now a security expert for our overseas embassies, he had forgotten more than we would ever know about the security and defense of a fixed area. It was just icing on the cake that he and his wife, Hom, were paranoid survivalists too. Wink was almost the size of Squeak, and Hom was built like the diminutive Lyndsey, who was as tiny as they come. It often seemed to me that with women, that the smaller they are, the more ferocity they pack per inch. Hom was five-foot-nothing but Wink, and the rest of us, too, were deathly afraid of her. Did I mention he was an Army Ranger, taught to fear nothing short of a nuclear bomb? He was also a true pacifist at heart. Wink would do whatever needed to be done if there was a bad guy involved, but he wouldn’t step on a spider if he could possibly help it. Hom, on the other hand, was a Laotian jungle fighter for the Royal Lao government well after the Vietnam War. She was about the most petite and exotically beautiful woman I knew and also eminently capable of and willing to cut out your heart and feed it to you if you crossed her family. While none of us had to walk on eggshells around her, we were always on our best behavior. Did I mention she was beautiful? Hey, I’m going for all the brownie points I can get here.
The survivalist’s credo: There is no such thing as too many guns or too much ammo. Also, there is especially no such thing as being too prepared. The Cain’s Pond compound wasn’t so much a conscious decision on my part as it was having my back to the wall. It had been time to move from Massachusetts on so many different levels, and the Cain’s Pond compound was already a work in progress. In my heart, I knew we could make it work as a defensive stalwart. I also knew any defensive position could eventually be breached and overrun.
Thankfully, the properties were bordered by three large bodies of water that took up a sizable fraction of the perimeter that needed to be defended. There was only one road entrance in and out and only a few positions in the forest that presented themselves to land-based invasion.
The old contractor adage came to mind when preparing the defense: “Do you want it Good, Fast, or Cheap? Pick two.
We picked Good and Fast.
One night in the kitchen, we were all in the middle of this major family decision meeting when Gary bellowed out: “DUCK!” Never in my life have I seen so many Talbots fit under one table, and that includes the night at the King and I Club in Kenmore Square when two of our ex-girlfriends walked in with each other.
Here we are, all down low with guns being drawn, locked and loaded. No one made a sound, not even my sister Lyn, which everyone was really amazed at, when Gary again says “Duck.”
“Where the fuck do you want us to go!?” And that was from my wife, Nancy. Gary repeats himself again, “Duck, or should I say, ducks. I want to use ducks to guard the fence barrier we will build. We’ll do it just like the double fence perimeter of military bases and put ducks in between the fences.”
I guess it shows how much we love Gary because to this day, he is still alive. For a moment, though, it was not a sure thing. I heard at least two hammers cock and I am pretty sure they were my father’s old 1911 and Squeak’s 12 gauge. It was also way too long before they got uncocked, by the way.
Gary, of course, was looking at all of us like an enraptured twelve-year-old who has just discovered girls.
It was Lyn who blurted out, ”Are you all fucking right? Do you have a death wish?” And those were the nicest words she busted out.
Actually, my favorite comment came from dad. “Son, I have three other boys just like you. If I take you out, I simply won’t have to remember so many names!” I think that was the one that wiped the silly ass grin off Gary’s face.
Admittedly, Gary’s presentation technique could use some polish, but the idea was spot on. With one exception. Where the hell were we going to get some ducks?
How quickly life changes. In one night, the events took that bunch of overly-suspicious, paranoid-demented, would-be survivalists in the making, to a whole new level.
We had taken to watching the psuedonews together as a family; even then I didn’t believe anything I saw on TV anymore. In the middle of the football scores they did one of those “Developing Story” breakaways. I was pissed. I really wanted to know how the Packers made out against divisional rival Minnesota! So now, we were watching some dainty little blonde reporter on the streets of Colorado talking about demonstrations in the street by what she referred to as “illegal immigrants.” Not quite sure how she had determined that obscure factoid, given that as the lights of the camera crew shined on these “illegal immigrants,” they looked grey/blue tinted and were dressed in bloody rags.
“Hmmm, must be the cold and poor ones from Samoa!! Damn Samoans are always causing trouble!” Squeak was sitting next to me and I couldn’t resist. Anyway, Squeak got me back with a leg sweep (more like an oak tree sweep) right in the shin. I turned to my father and whined: “Dad! Squeak’s kicking me again! Make him stop.”
Dad’s pained look was covered under, “Does this ever end. Having kids seemed like such a good idea at the time. What was I thinking!”
Immigrants? God, does it not annoy the shit out of anyone else that so-called reporters couldn’t be bothered with the most basic fact checking! Anyway, one of the supposed Immies is getting close to the lady with the mic in her hand. She is still babbling away at the camera when you could hear the cameraman say: “Sheila, the crowd is getting close to you. May want to move forward.” He starts to back up. Sheila points behind her and makes her latest Emmy Award winning comment (in her mind anyway) when the closest Illegal snaps at her outstretched finger and just misses! The cameraman sees this, though Sheila does not, and starts to back up faster, all the while screaming at her, “Sheila, something’s wrong here! That guy just tried to bite you!”
So,
we are watching this, and it is like seeing a bad horror flick where everyone is yelling at the TV, “No!! No!! Don’t go down the basement!!!” It was just that stupid. Sheila points behind her again (there will be no points awarded for intelligence here), and you can hear the crunch as her finger snaps off like a nice, fresh, crispy breadstick. Gruesome.
Sheila was now squirting blood like Dan Akroyd on SNL when he did the Julia Child sketch. The cameraman was backing up for his life while trying to keep filming. We can’t see much of her any longer, but we can hear her screams as the oozing blue/black and grey Illegal Immigrants take a few more chomps on her.
Everyone, and I do mean everyone, was staring at the TV in shock thinking this has got to be a really bad prank. Then Gary does what we all felt like doing. He runs for the front door, dashes outside, and pukes like there is no tomorrow. And indeed, there would be no tomorrow. Certainly not like anyone expected tomorrow would be.
Lyndsey shivered in with, “Oh my god. Are those…zombies?!” We often say Mike’s son, Justin, is Captain Obvious; but Lyndsey is Ensign Evidently.
I had a visual epiphany. “Damn…I know where this is in Colorado, and it’s not that far from Mike’s condo in Little Hamsterville, or whatever the hell the name of that lockdown community is. Someone call him. He has got to know about this.”
My cell phone was buzzing away in my pocket, but I couldn’t hear it. Everyone started yelling at me to answer my phone quickly. I got it out of my pants (the phone, you perv) and flipped it open. (Yes, it was a ten year old Motorola flip phone.) There was a text message from my daughter, Melissa. “Saw news, coming n….” That’s it. Nothing else. What the hell kind of a message was that? She could be “Coming now, coming never, coming next Tuesday after dinner.” Trying to get a message back to her proved useless. Fuckin’pissa.
Nancy yells back from the kitchen landline that she is already trying to get back to Melissa but is not getting through. Lyn speed dials Mike on her cell and waits for a connection. Nope. Tries a text message and waits some more, until it becomes obvious that comm is already going down. Squeak confirms that the net is also out and just like that we, and everyone else, are isolated. Our TV went out moments later. Figures. The most useless tool lasted the longest.
Honk! Honk! Wink’s Ford Executioner (Ford Expedition, actually, but I like my dad’s name for it better. Family joke is that he used to write material for comedian Norm Crosby–also from Boston, by the way. His act was to absolutely euthanize the English language) missiles into the driveway. He comes bounding up the front stairs yelling about the news. Then he clamps up as he sees our faces and knows that we have, indeed, already seen it.
And so it begins.
“We can’t defend this place, Ron,” Gary yelled at me for the umpteenth time as we were getting ready to go inside for another strategy/tactical session
“We have to defend this place, man. We really don’t have a choice. Where the hell else are we going to defend ourselves?”
“Why are you so damned caught up in being here? We can pack up and go.”
“Dude, there are all kinds of reasons to make a stand here. For starters, it’s home. We are dug in here in so many ways. How the hell would you propose to move the Talmart supply depot we’ve got under the house? What about Wink and Hom? How will Mike find us if we are nomading all over the state?”
“You don’t know that he is coming. You don’t know that he will make it out, even if he is trying.”
Dad had just come out the front door and heard the last comment. “He is coming, Gary. Never doubt it. I don’t know how or when, but he will be trying to get here. Mike was always one for being together in a crisis. How can you forget he came all the way back from Hawaii to kick some ass when Lyn’s first husband was hurting her? He knew we were about to inflict justice, but he didn’t want to be left out of the fun. Sorry, Gary, but I have to believe he is coming with his whole family, and I am staying right here for him, even if you guys decide to leave.”
Gary and I looked at each other after that last bomb from dad and shrugged. Like Mike and Glenn, dad was also a Marine. Decision made. End of discussion. Move forward. So now the discussion moved from possible relocation to: How in the world do we quickly build a defensible compound in a place that may soon be under attack? Oh joy!
“We have two neighbors in this woods, right, Gary? One is Wink, an old Army Ranger; knows his shit. And the other one, Connie, is Purina Zombie chow. We can use this to our advantage. Continue fortifying a compound with Wink and use Connie as our own personal DEW line. We are at least half way surrounded by water, so until the Zees learn to swim, we just have to defend a finite set of perimeters.“
“Gary, I know Mike. He will realize soon enough that Little Tortoisetown is not a place that can survive. Too many frackin’ weird people live down there. I have been there. They will probably want to invite the zombies in for dinner and try reasoning with them over some chilled Merlot. Nuh-uh. Mike will try to make a go of it down there, but it won’t last.
“Besides, Colorado was one of the first states to turn, and in a big-time way. When we still had some last minute news up here, we found out that the virus was already rampant all through the West and Mid-West. We were just damn fortunate it was almost winter and most everything up here is too cold to spread fast. That, and lucky we were up in the northeast corner of nowhere! I hope.”
Sound carries quite a ways in the woods on a cool clear day like this one. Gary heard her before I did. My dog, Gabby, was a great one for letting loose a Harley Davidson Hound Dog Howl whenever she dug up a porcupine hole or stuck her head into a raccoon dam or was playing in the swamp, digging up long-dead blackened squirrels. It was her way of letting us, her pack, know she had found something good and we needed to come and share it with her. (Except the squirrels, those were all hers.)
This time, however, her howl was not quite the same. Higher pitch to it, and she was moving so fast through the woods I was surprised the sound got to us before she did. She is a big dog, and that bay of hers sounds so very ominous. One would think she should have been named Cujo instead of Gabrielle, but she came to us from the rescue folks already named.
Usually, she runs up to greet us and tries to get us to follow her back to her find. This time, though, she crawled under my dad’s front porch and was not coming out.
We began to hear twigs snap in the woods behind the house. We have always been agreeable to folks taking walks or hunting on the property; there was plenty of land. Dad didn’t hunt anymore, I never did, and Gary only hunts with a camera. But twigs snapping now did not bode well. As best we could listen over Gabby’s whimpering, we began to hear more and more activity. I yelled out: “Who’s there?” Immediately both Gary and my dad looked at me like: Are you really this stupid?! I, of course, looked back like: Why? and then, Oh yeah, I guess that was kind of dumb.
Dad and Gary got back into the house and everyone readied for the worst. Squeak and I started hoofing it over to my home, thankfully, not far up the road. As we were running, it became crystal clear how much defense buildup work we had in front of us. We didn’t even have a primitive comm link for the compound, as phones and computer networks all went down as quickly as everything else that required wi-fi electronics, let alone a defensible perimeter. We had spent all of our energy and resources so far on gathering supplies, weapons and ammo. Nothing had been put into communications. To a person, we’d all thought we had time for that.
As I came screaming through the front door with Gabby following and pushing me through, I yelled for Nancy and the kids to be sure we were locked up and to break out weapons. At least we had covered this in some home defense drills. They hadn’t been designed to prevent a zombie invasion, but they should work in a pinch.
Nancy would be a loader for Meredith, Mark, the Squeak, and me. Each had a spot with the north side left unmanned. The north face, like any good Maine house, had no windows and no doors. Coldest side of the house; why make i
t any worse.
And now we wait.
Which really sucked because that meant I had time to think. Do we have enough ammo? Probably….Will Mark and Mer be able to shoot if they need to? Great target shooters, my kids, but we all know that don’t mean jack shit when it comes time to hole a person. And, yeah, I know…I know, used to be a person. Someone want to come over and explain that to my kids? Squeak, I just didn’t see a problem with. The big Samoan man was indeed a gentle giant, that was, until someone threatened anybody he cared about. He had taken to me the moment we met in high school as I was getting the snot kicked out of me by an upperclassman I had mouthed off to. I was a smartmouthed little shit even then, no surprise I stayed that way. I swear he only joined the football team so he could protect me; not sure I deserved it. As we grew up, my family became his family too. It felt right he was here with me now.
Then we got to see our very first zombie.
For a moment, I thought we were at new Universal Studios theme park, “Zombieplanet.” Also thought the show was crummy; this one lone zombie came slipping and stumbling toward the house at sloth-like speed. We waited, and we waited, and there was no other action coming from the woods or anywhere else.
“Hey! Granny Zombie,” Mark called out. “We spent all this time breaking our backs building a compound to defend against one undead old lady. Gee dad, thank you ever so much.” Sarcasm is a Bostonian Birthright, and the Talbot family are the undisputed champions.
Evidently, the title extends to wise-guy teenage Talbot boys. Should he live to see his full manhood (and I am not talking about death by zombie, I am referring to death by daddy), he will make an exemplary illustration of Boston’s Best! I am so proud!