by Ron Tufo
“Screw it. I will drive it home!!!” Should only take eight or ten hours in third gear. No closed cab…so what? “The temp is above freezing and I will be back to the compound before dark. Probably. Maybe. Don’t care. I am not leaving without this prize.”
No one argued with my logic. Which is in and of itself a telltale sign they agreed, as I have no logic when it comes to obtaining heavy equipment.
I stuffed in my earplugs, which I never leave home without, and oh Lord that big old Detroit engine actually vibrated the ground below me. In retrospect, it probably sounded like a dinner bell to the zombies. All I saw was everybody else scrambling to get out of the yard ahead of me so they wouldn’t have to crawl along behind Sophie…yeah, I had already named her.
Squeak had drawn the short straw and had to drive the Ranger home with all the fuel he could carry. For sure, I would not make it in one go, but optimistically, I had hoped to refuel only once enroute.
So, have you ever had the sinking feeling of being the Pied Piper? After about a mile of kidney quaking travel, I pointed the CAT straight, locked the sticks and turned around. Behind me was a Macy’s Day Parade of zombies. Big ones, little ones, fat ones, skinny ones, even some forest rodents and a good-sized feral Maine coon cat. Hey, the food chain still exists, I guess. Cat must be damned hungry, though to show itself in daylight and on an open road. So the grocery list from the top was me, the zombies, the mice, then the coon cat. Some things don’t change, I guess. Oh well, he who eats last, eats best.
I was thinking the cat was stalking the mice, who were attracted to the stink of the zombies, who were attracted to the Talbot in the dozer.
As the little convoy reached the Rte. 1 center of town, most of it headed up the mountain towards Talbotland. Gary and Mark had already kept heading north for the Bucksport Radio Shack. Squeak and I were nowhere to be seen. By now we were miles behind everyone else in our own little Bing Crosby Wonderland, just chuggin’ along, singin’ a song, side by side.
My personal entourage and I really were having a most pleasant afternoon convoy. I was behind the joysticks of a massive bulldozer, the biggest and baddest I had ever driven. In the world of construction lingo, there are drivers and there are operators. I could operate a backhoe with the best of them, but I would have to prove myself on this baby over time before I could claim the title of huge mother dozer operator. Not that it really mattered anymore, but it was a linguistic connection to the former real world. Hey, you can grab your handle on sanity wherever you wish. I have mine.
I had plenty of time, at my pace, to watch things unfold. There were eight of them, by the way, zombies that is. The whole parade ended with the guy and his broom, being tastefully represented by a big Samoan in a small pickup truck full of diesel fuel cans. Well, it was fun, at least until our cat friend got hungry enough to jump the line. Dude, if zombies could scream, kitty’s afternoon snack would be wailing like the Stones on steroids. The cat bolted right through the mischief of mice who scattered like rodents–what else? When the predator got close enough to the last zombie in line, it leapt up on a shoulder, clawed its way down to the belly and began eviscerating. Not even getting bit by a zombie looked as painful as how the cat was disemboweling this particularly juicy piece of walking gelatinous slobber. Being dragged into the culvert along the side of the road is not my definition of a quiet and dignified death. To this day, I vow that zombie looked woefully frightened. The cat, like all cats, looked decisively evil.
The mice, however, filed back into the parade like a marching band. I can only think that the zombies must have smelled overpoweringly good to them. Each to his own, I suppose. Oh well, always move forward. Not necessarily in a straight line, but always forward.
That’s when I ran out of fuel. Double damn. Behind me, the procession continued merrily along. Zombies and rodents and Samoans, oh my!
How do you fuel up a bulldozer surrounded by things that want to eat you, you ask? You don’t. You wait until your support truck manned by a Samoan Superman comes up beside you and tosses a rifle at you to replace the dinky little .32 pistol you brought. Then you stand at the top like King Kong Ron and start picking them off. I pretty easily got three while Squeak got three more. Couldn’t find the last one for a moment, but I was damn glad I knew there only seven of them left, thanks to kitty’s little skirmish.
Then I got my ankle grabbed. I am not ashamed to admit the noise I produced made one of Squeak’s squeaks sound deep and manly. Good God Almighty! I was so shitless scared I couldn’t even bring the rifle to bear. I just started beating my attacker in the head with the tip of the barrel.
Squeak stood there with his mouth open wide enough to drive the dozer into it. He couldn’t shoot either, but at least his reasons were sound. There was so much gnashing of teeth and general thrashing about he would probably have taken both of us out and gone one up on my father’s alleged twofer.
Teeth were getting closer to making contact with my beloved calf and rifle butting was not making any noticeable difference in this guy’s desire to make an hors d’oeuvre of my leg. Arnold Palmer never made as pretty a backswing as I executed with the rifle. I wound up like an over-tightened corkscrew, then began my downswing. Admittedly, a zombie’s noggin is a wee bit bigger than a Titleist, but I swear his head went fifty feet, right onto the green and rolled into the hole. An amazing wedge shot–and the crowd goes wild as the King is back in the tournament lead!
What happened to the mice during all this? Since the big diesel was now quiet, you could hear them nattering and squeaking to each other. Then they took off like a shot to get their free meal of crushed skull on a stick.
We got the dozer all fueled up and she only coughed once before kicking in, as if to say: ”Don’t let this happen again, stupid.”
In the future, when telling the story, Gary would refer to the Radio Shack trip as “Mark and Gary’s Excellent Adventure.” Mark, however, would remember it as “Mark and Gary meet the Legion of the Less than Dead.”
They got up to the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, which the ex-Bostonians here refer to as the Leonard P. Zakim/Bunker Hill Wanna Be Bridge, with nary a problem. Had to scoot around a few big rigs that had swerved out of control when their drivers either turned or tried to avoid someone who had turned. There was barely enough passage room on the bridge that they could serpentine through and over. Only had to bumper shove four or five cars out of the way. My poor truck. I know Gary was smiling all the time, I know it!
As they pulled into Bucksport center, Gary pointed out the old Radio Shack that had been doing business from inside a Subway restaurant. My, how the mighty had fallen. It had already been ransacked for electronic parts and then trashed in general. Luckily, Gary knew just where to look. We had been there a few years ago to rebuild a shield on our water heating system designed to restrict some excess energy, so he remembered exactly where the resistors and the capacitors were. Those were the critical elements needed for the mines and they were still there. Freakin’ excellent. They picked some more goodies out of what was left behind from the previous looters and packed up to go.
Across the street was Ming’s Chinese Restaurant. Gary was starting to develop a glaze in his eyes and wondering if there were any edible spare ribs still in there–he gets distracted easily.
Mark was throwing stuff in the back seat when he noticed his partner was staring dreamily across the street. As Gary was drawing his sleeve across his mouth, some movement caught Mark’s eye.
“Gary, I think we should be leaving now. Gary? Gary!” No response. Gary was being hypnotically pulled to cross the street toward the restaurant. Mark’s arm shot out, gripped Gary’s shoulder, and shook it. “Gary, let it go, man. There ain’t any damn spare ribs left,” he said, knowing his uncle very well.
“How do you know, man? Maybe somebody was eating them and left a few on the plate as they went zombie? I gotta know, man.”
“Dude, I tell you what. My mom and Hom make a mean Chinese dinner tog
ether. We will send Aunt Lyn out get cups like we usually do, so she won’t be anywhere near the kitchen. They did it for dad and me last year. I promise I will ask them to cook up a takeout special when we get back. We really gotta go, man. Look over your shoulder.”
“Shit! Why didn’t you tell me? There must be hundreds of them!”
“Probably more. Get in the truck. I’m driving.”
I don’t know how you manage to leave rubber in a four cylinder Ford Ranger, but the tires screamed bloody murder all the way down Main St. They hung a quick right and headed back over the bridge. I think if he’d had some explosives with him, Gary would have set the bridge to blow. Too bad; it would have saved us a lot of trouble later on.
They pulled over when they got to the other side of the river to slow down their breathing. Nothing gets the old adrenaline flowing like a good zombie sighting! Mark looked back and yet another “shit!” was exclaimed. The zombie drove was still coming and it looked like they were picking up recruits along the way.
He went to put the truck back into gear and Gary blurted, “Hey, little Dude. Wait a minute. Something here doesn’t look right.”
My son Mark is a smart, gentle, funny kid, but the look he gave his Uncle Gary would have melted titanium. “Uncle, I love you, but if you don’t let me put this truck in gear and get the holy hell out of here, this is not going to end well.”
“Trust me, little buddy. I want them to get close enough so I can see a few things–like why are they massing and moving this way? Why do the ones out in front look a little more alive than all the other zombies? If they are going to keep coming, we need to try and warn anyone in the way as to what is going on.”
And so they waited. Took about a half hour for the zombies to get across the bridge.
“Son of a Bitch. Well, that’s one question answered. The two who look like they are still almost alive? That’s Abner Littlehill and his crab of a wife, Ida Maeve. They seem to be leading this freaky herd. What in this misshapen world is going on? Screw this. Let’s drive forward another mile and wait again. We really need to know what the hell is going on.”
Mark did not need any encouragement to start up the truck.
The First of Many
Moe, Larry, the cheese. No. Limburger - The Three Stooges, Horse Collars, 1935
As Steve and dad got their respective rigs up onto Mount Ephraim Rd. and in toward Cain’s Pond, they could hear the shots ring out. Dad was in the lead and he downshifted rounding into the last curve. The big Western Star tractor lurched forward spewing enough gravel from underneath it to break windows on nearby houses. He came roaring around the final corner with Steve right on his heels and directly into a shitstorm of zombies. Thank goodness zoms are not the most organized infantry or they would have overwhelmed the thin defense that was left to guard the compound.
They could not get their trucks anywhere near close enough to make a dash to the house without going through way too many zombies. Like the old warrior he was, Wink noticed this bad fact right away, and shifted his fire to clear a path for them. Everyone had learned their defense lessons well and made sure they covered the void when Winks’s vector of fire changed.
Dad started to open the door of his cab and found it jammed closed by the presence of two hungry guests. He did what any Marine would do. First he swore, then he took a sip of his coffee, then he grabbed his 1911. He powered down his window just enough to get the barrel out and pointed at something shootable. A zombie still got some of her arm inside the cab, so up went the window, rather quickly, too!
Folks, if you have ever seen what a snapping turtle can do to a twig, or a finger, for that matter, then you have guessed what is coming next! Yup, zombie arms are just not as firm as live human arms. Took that sucker off at the elbow. It plopped right into the cab with dad. Good thing it wasn’t Gary or cleaning the cab later would have been twice as bad. Later, when he told the story, dad would dwell mostly on the pervasive smell of rotten meat.
This time he took the window down at the right moment and cleared his exit from the truck. Wink saw this and shot him a pathway to the house. Now it was Steve’s turn to “Run to daylight,” as one of my personal heroes, Vince Lombardi once said. Well, that made me wonder what a zombie football game would be like. I can just picture each play taking like an hour and the announcer saying: “Once again, there is no gain on the play, as the offense has eaten the defense.” Anyway…
Steve had a somewhat easier time of it, as a little more firepower was added to his escape with the addition of Tony and Jesse also providing support. Although he did give everyone a scare when he slid on the gravel and twisted a knee. Lyn damn near threw her rifle down and ran into the line of fire to get to him. Three guys and her son Jesse screaming “Nooooo!” at her thankfully got her attention quickly enough for Steve to also yell out, “I am okay sweetheart. I am fine,” as he hobbled toward the house doing an admirable imitation of that new dance craze, The Zombie Stumble.
Several minutes passed and no new zombies had appeared; it was becoming fact that the encounter was over. A quick head count showed that we had no casualties to our company and everyone slumped down right where they were to catch their collective breaths and slow their heart rate to something less than nuclear fission.
As the Uranium decay atmosphere slowly began to fade away, the earthquake started a rolling convulsion of the ground that shook at your back teeth. From around the bend in the road about a half mile away, came Sophie. As weary from rattling around in the cat bird seat as I was, my smile was almost as wide as her blade. I was having a fine old time and felt just like the Big Kahuna! Little man on a big machine, followed by a lone zombie who had picked up the chase about a mile ago, followed by a big man in a little truck. If it wasn’t so serious around here, it would have been a laughable sight. As I rumbled into the drive just outside of the other equipment, it began to dawn on me; all had not been well here.
I noticed dozens of bodies lying around, some of which were still fluttering. I looked up and caught my wife’s eyes. She smiled back at me and I knew we were all okay no matter what else had happened.
Then I looked at my zombie stalker, who just meandered up the driveway, and back at my dad. “He followed me home. Can I keep him? Can I? Can I, please?” One shot rang out. “I’ll take that as a no.”
Mark and Gary came around the corner moments later and got to see only the end result of the carnage. Mark’s mouth opened into a silent, “Oh my God.”
Gary, on the other hand, started beating his head against the dash. He was absitively, posilutely pissed off that he missed out on all the action.
All the heavy breathing was just quieting down again when Gary started his spin on the day. “Do you want the good news, the bad news, or the really bad news?”
Nancy beat all of us with the rejoinder, “If you don’t give us the good news first I will shoot you where you stand and I will start below the waist.” Have you ever been to a movie where some poor slob gets kicked right in the feelies and to-a-man every guy in the audience lets out sympathetic groan? Yeah, you got the picture.
It is truly a notable day, one of Talbot magnitude of measurement with highest Summa Cum Laude Bragging honors when one’s spouse and children become fluent in the many forms of sarcastic dialect and begin to hold their own.
I had never been so proud of my wife! She had reached the pinnacle of Talbotism! I brushed a tear from my cheek as my dad began the slow clap of family applause. Wink just stood there, dumbfounded, making some inane comment about: “What kind of unbalanced lunatic family have I thrown my lot in with?”
Squeak took pity on the poor man. “Fellow big dude,” he lamented, “they do kind of grow on you after a while. Just try not to piss off the little one over there,” he pointed to Lyn. “She can be the deadliest.”
Wink nodded in agreement, answering that he knew that score. Had one of his own to deal with. Then he roared, “Damn! I forgot that Hom is alone at my house.” He t
urned away from us and started talking into thin air.
Now we were all looking at him and thinking, “Is he losing it? This can’t be good.”
Then we heard Hom’s voice answer him that she was fine. No problems at their house. All looks turned to each other silently asking, “Did you hear that too?”
Wink turned back around and smiled. First because Hom was fine, and second because he had a surprise for us. Knowing how important having solid and fast communications was in these situations. He had dug out some earpiece transceivers he had absconded with (by mistake, of course) from one of his security assignments. Found a couple of batteries that still had some juice and voila! Instant communication. Only downside was a lack of batteries to keep them working. That, and that there was only one base unit. (Hey, how much can a guy mistakenly abscond with and still maintain some plausible deniability?)
Gary let out a big hoot, “Hey Mark! I told you we would be able to use that drawer full of hearing aid batteries! Now I have two pieces of good news, which I choose to impart to you first, thereby saving some of Nancy’s ammunition and my own very dear private parts.
“Wink,” he continued, “we must have hundreds of fresh batteries in the bag. If not exactly the right ones, I am sure we can fab something up. Also, we got everything we need to make as many mines as we can manufacture.”
Without warning or preamble, Gary then fell into his best Walter Cronkite imitation. “Leaving the Good News portion of our nightly broadcast, I now segue into the Bad News segment: There are literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of zombies up in the Bucksport area. They are headed our way and they are growing in numbers as they move. Estimates are they will arrive here in three to four days, if they maintain the same pace.”