by Ron Tufo
True to form, Gary’s first words were, “So, who gets to shoot her?”
Mark looked at his uncle with a mixture of awe and fear. Pretty much the same way I was looking him, too.
I said something about going back to the truck and getting more ammo for the turkey bagging that was about to take place when the drudges finally realized a banquet was standing right next to them. I threw my keys at Mark and sent him back to the truck for some more ammo while I targeted the first few zombies I would shoot. Mostly, I didn’t want him to see Gary shooting his grandmother. I told Gary to do the honors with my mother since he seemed to have the motivation for it, and, to be honest, I don’t think I had the plums to do it.
We both started opened with a barrage and after I had emptied my first magazine, the picture began to change. First place I looked was at the Zombie Queen and she was still upright in her wheelchair.
Second look was at Gary. “What the fuck, Dude?! I thought you were going to take care of that?”
“Ron, I did, man. I shot her three times. Every bullet was a headshot. I watched the exit wounds spray out from the back of her head. I do not even know how she is still together. I think all I did was annoy the shit out of her!”
“Well, one thing the shots did, they forced her to lose her zombie whisperer control. All shuffling dead now headed for the nursing home staff who, thankfully, were also free from her Jedi mind control tricks.”
My big, brave brother went to hide behind me. A neat trick given that he is taller. “Oh…oh shit, Ron. She’s looking at me. She’s looking at me!”
I looked at my mother and sure as shit, she was looking at him. So, being the big brother, I moved to the side a little so she could get a better evil-eye stare at Gary because that’s what big brothers are for.
The zombies were changing their strategy. Since the nursing home folks were getting out of range, they had turned their attention on the potluck dinner that wasn’t moving. Namely, us.
“Hey Gary, forget about Lucretia Borgia for a minute and let’s take care of some urgent business here. Where the hell is Mark with the extra ammo? All I have is one other magazine with me.”
Back up and shoot. Back up and shoot. I put myself into a trance with that strategy. Gary understood the tactic right away and fell in right beside me. We finally heard Mark come up behind us and he handed us each a few magazines. He also fell in to the tactic with us and we were beginning to exert some control over the situation. A little more than half the zombies were down for the count and we had just about half of our ammo left. As long as we kept moving, we should be fine.
Just goes to show you, even five seconds of complacency can cost you the high ground. No sooner had I begun to relax my sphincter muscle from clench to hold, than Mark, who was reloading at the time, dropped his magazine, reached down to get it and saw what was coming in behind us. He usually doesn’t swear in front of me, so it justifiably got my attention when he let out with two of George Carlin’s famous comedy curses that you can’t say on TV: “Cocksucker. Motherfucker!”
If I didn’t know better, I would swear that the expressions of the zombies behind and to the side of us went from a “We got them now” grin, to a “Damn, they see us” frown.
Suddenly we had gone from being in control to being surrounded. Well, that sucked.
“Mark, we will shoot you a path to the truck. You have the keys. Get it and come rescue us. Quick, man!”
History will show that at least one Talbot that day had his brain in gear and that his name was neither Ron nor Gary. “Dad, I can’t drive a stick. The ranger is a manual transmission!” Gary grabbed the keys from my son and started to torpedo his own path to the truck.
Mark and I kept focus on the now closing group from the front and Gary made a dash for it and tripped over one the downed zombies. So much for dignified gallantry.
“Mark, quick, cover Gary. I got this side.” Mark made two kill shots just as Gary was getting up. Each one whizzed past either side of his ears. I had a moment of cold karma revenge from the time Gary shot at me through the door. Felt pretty good actually, as Gary quickly returned to a prone position and started clawing at the asphalt to get even lower.
A hole was opened on our left by Mark and he had to scream at Gary to get up and make a getaway. Gary rose from the pavement like a cat with its tail on fire and ran the fastest forty-yard dash in the history of the Talbots, all the while yelping, “Don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot anymore. I can get to the truck. I really can.”
Being at Custer’s Last Stand with my son was not how I pictured going out and I certainly didn’t want to be taking my son with me. Mark finished the last zombies at our backs and turned to help me.
“How much ammo you got left, son?”
“I don’t, dad. I’m all out.”
“Fuck.” Had I said that out loud? “Ok, there are more of them than I have bullets, so I am going to be very choosy which ones I plug. If I have to let any get closer to us, at least keep them at gun’s length anyway. Knock them silly if you can. Just don’t let any near enough to chew, and look at our six occasionally. Okay. Keep backing up toward the building. Hopefully, Gary will get here in the next few seconds.”
We heard the Ranger engine kick over. We heard the tires squeal on the pavement. We did not see the truck. What the hell! I had three shots left. There were seven more zombies. Unless I could get them to line up and take two or three with each shot, we were in deep doo-doo.
Too soon I had only one bullet left and I was getting crowded by Mark who was doing his damnedest to keep two other zombies at bay with his Blackout .30 caliber baseball bat. We were not going to last much longer before one of them broke through. Where the hell was Gary?
Like a road rage driver on the Boston expressway at the peak of rush hour, my Ford Ranger came around the building on two screeching wheels and plowed directly into the remaining zombies. An arm flew by my son’s head, a gooey leg smacked me right across the chest with that wet fleshy thunk sound. Great, I thought. Now I am covered in zombie glop.
The truck ground to a stop a few feet past us with a goofy smiling Gary behind the wheel.
“What the fuck took you so long? We heard the engine start over a minute ago. Damn, Gary! I didn’t think we were going to be able to hold out.”
“Yeah, I figured you would run short, so I got up a head of steam by gunning it around the building and getting the right angle to drive straight into them with all the power this little Tonka Toy has. Pretty cool, huh!”
“Yeah, really brilliant. You scared the living shit out of us, plus you got the front of my truck all busted up and covered in zombie stuff. Five more seconds and you could have taken your sweet time because we wouldn’t have lasted.”
Gary’s expression went from smirking like the rooster of the coop to looking like some chicken turds had floated to the top in his corn flakes. I don’t know why I keep expecting logic might have any place to thrive within his shaken not stirred James Bond martini of a brain.
My son began to laugh so hard I thought he would break into pieces himself. He just stood there giggling and then said to us, “Has anybody noticed that Grandma is still looking at us from her wheelchair?
“Ron, I don’t know what to do. I really did shoot her. I think we need a bigger gun!”
“I have one bullet left. That is all we have. I wish I had my chain saw with us. At least if I cut off her head I could be sure she was done. I will give it the old college try. Mark, you get into the truck with Uncle Gary and face the other way. Really don’t want you to see me do this.”
I walked over to my ex-mother. Her jaws were still snapping. Couldn’t tell if she was giving me some grief or was hoping for a bite. Well, at least this way both Gary and I would have had a hand in her real demise.
I came up to her side and put the gun to her temple. Put my finger in the trigger housing and apologized to her. As you have probably gathered, she was not the world’s greatest mom and tha
t is putting it as diplomatically as I can. Fact is, she was too spoiled and fawned over as a kid herself to ever understand what it was to be a mom. Her fault? Somewhat. Possibly…probably. Aww who the fuck knows. I just know that we never had a real mom in the sense of someone caring for us as like a real mom is supposed to.
I squeezed a little harder and it was over. The remorse came, as I feared it would. She was dead already, I told myself. It only helped a little.
The walk back to the truck seemed longer than it was. God, what had happened to the world?! I climbed into the back seat. Gary peeled out of the lot and we were on our way home. Everyone was quiet.
We passed Doc’s again and we passed Ida’s reinforced infantry. Damn shame we were out of bullets. Would have made the day a bit brighter to take that old waste of a life out, too.
Dad was sitting on the front porch waiting for our return along with Squeak and Lyn. He had asked everyone else to busy themselves doing anything that wouldn’t put them within hearing distance. He felt, correctly, that the next few minutes should be only for older, blood members of the Talbot family. I was not surprised that he included Squeak. He had been so close to us for so long, it was impossible not to think of him as anything except a brother. A huge, rock-like mountain of a brother, but a brother, nonetheless.
Mark took the hint when he saw what was about to go down and made himself scarce, mumbling something about cleaning his gun. How I wished I could join him. This was not going to be fun.
“You find your mother?” He was looking at me and no one else. Well, shit. Looked like all questions were going to be addressed to me as the oldest child.
“Kinda.”
“Did she get out of the nursing home okay?”
“Kinda.”
“Were you able to rescue her? I see that she is not with you. She alive?”
“Not so much.”
Dad looked like he had many more questions; I did not have many more answers.
My sibs had done all they could to stay out of the line of fire. Don’t blame them. I just wished I was with them in the shade of backstage instead of under the limelight.
“Okay, then. Get inside and get cleaned up. I see you also let Gary drive your truck. Damn shame. It was a nice little truck, you should know better. Oh, and we will not speak of today ever again. I do not want any more information than I already have. Are we clear on that count?” He looked around the porch and got relieved nods of agreement from all.
I got the feeling I had just been directly introduced to what “plausible deniability” really meant.
An Old Fashion Maine Winter Night
A good leader must always be able to laugh at himself. - John Kreiter
A banshee of a New England early nor’easter snowstorm would be how we remembered this night. It would be gone soon enough, given that late autumn/early winter weather hadn’t gone over to unending, body numbing cold yet, but in the meantime, it was not a fun night. Had to be 3a.m. when our youngest and newest member of the family screamed as only a little girl can scream, which has got to be a genetic thing programmed into the vocal cords of young girls. Kind of a “This is not going to stop until someone rescues me” type of scream, very handy in many instances. Nancy woke immediately from her welcome but fitful sleep. Me, on the other hand, well, I may be a dad, but I was also still a guy who hadn’t had enough sleep in what seemed like decades; took me a bit longer to regain consciousness.
So, as Iza came flying into our bedroom sonaring a hundred forty decibels of wailing murder, our first reaction was: “Which nightmare are we dealing with now because of Uncle Gary?” He has been known to tell the younglings a ghost story or two, and they are really gruesome, trust me. I really have to have a talk with that boy at my first opportunity.
This time, unfortunately, we could not lay the blame at Gary’s feet. Upon Iza’s insistence, we went downstairs to her room and turned on the light. There in the window for her eight year old eyes to burn into her poor, not-quite-a-tweener brain, was a frozen zombie. “A Zomsicle!” I cried. Nancy gasped. I started to laugh, which turned immediately into a gasp, too, as I got drop punched in the feelies by my darling wife.
Thankfully, Iza was oblivious to my insensitive reaction at the sight in the window as she was too busy staring and shivering. Couldn’t blame the poor kid at all; it was a macabre thing to witness. I promised her as the storm abated in the morning, I would go out and remove the new window ornament. I got the look from both of them like “Really? You are not going to do it right now?!” I purposefully tried to let the mindprobe pass unnoticed, but I unquestionably felt the disturbance in the Force.
This was not going to be an argument I would win.
At least, I thought, we had the foresight to reinforce all our windows, first and second floor. Talbots are nothing if not sufficiently paranoid. There was no way anything resembling a zombie was getting into the house that way. This fact, of course, did nothing to relieve the concerns and nightmares of Iza. She would sleep in our bed for the rest of this night.
No such luck for me. I did my best to find and put on my go-outside-and-drag-a-zombie-through-the snow clothes. I could never dress right for formal occasions such as this one. Should I wear my calf-high snow boots or my fishing waders? What goes best with my LL Bean parka? Hmmm, my old madras scarf would probably clash with that dark green jacket. Decisions, decisions.
So, here I am in my backyard, roping a frozen zombie like a calf in a rodeo. Thank goodness this guy hadn’t eaten in a while. He didn’t weigh any more than I could drag. The snow was that lightweight powdery stuff and slippery enough that I could move him without herniating something I didn’t want to herniate. The next question of the evening popped into my numb ice-covered mind: Where do I put him?
I could stand him up and tie him to the maple tree in the front yard like a scarecrow. Nah. Nancy has remarkable aim with that small cast iron frying pan. Wouldn’t want to tempt her to test her arm first thing in the morning when she saw him. My shoulder still hurt from the last time.
I could drag him all the way to my father’s house and leave him on the front porch. No, that’s not such a good idea, either. Gary may be on night watch. He wouldn’t miss a chance to drop a hammer at anything moving on the porch regardless of warnings from my father.
By now I was running out of gas. The hell with it. I just propped him up on the door of my garage across the road and cracked his arm as if he was waving to anybody who passed by. Since I was outside, at night, in the middle of a blizzard, dragging a frozen zombie, I reserved my right to have a little fun.
Back in the house, while everyone else is all tucked into their nice warm beds, I was finally beginning to feel my fingers again from holding them over the wood stove to the point of melting flesh. Dreams of pillows and blankets were just beginning to soothe me when the living room light clicked on. Mark, our son #1, shows up in the doorway saying he heard scraping outside and would like to know if he can sleep on the floor in our room. Telling him it was me yanking a zombie through the yard did not seem like it was going to help the situation. I looked at him and then I looked back at the now sleeping Iza, who was still awake four seconds ago before the light came on, clever little brat, and realized one more into the smallish bedroom meant one more out of the bedroom. Wanna guess who was going to sleep on the couch? Oh well, the joys of fatherhood. Besides, I would never admit this in any public forum, but I liked the couch. Comfortable and smack in front of the wood stove. So, gracious dad grabbed another pillow and blanket from the closet, stoked the fire and stretched out on the sofa. The fucking doorbell rang.
In the front doorway stood the biggest snow-covered beastie I have ever freakin’ seen. I scrambled for my rifle when the bell rang again. Now, I have been accused of being a little slow in the awareness department, but it finally dawned on me that no zombie in his right mind would ring the damn doorbell in the middle of a blizzard–or at any other time, for that matter.
So, I stopped
and listened and I heard: “Ron? Ron? Are you there? Answer the door, man. I’m freezing out here.” It’s freaking Squeak! I lowered my rifle and got up off the couch because it didn’t seem he was going to go away if I didn’t let him in first.
Reluctantly, I opened the door and let Squeak in. Shrink your nutsack-cold air blasted through the opening. Wonderful. This was just what I looked forward to on a cold snowy night: scared kids, a wife who has no compunction at all about whacking me in the privates and sending me outside to do a body removal, and a neighbor who, for all I know, wants to borrow a cup of sugar at four in the morning. Oh Joy and Rapture!
Meanwhile, as I am off in my own little world of self-pity, I am brought back to stark reality by the sorrowful look upon Squeak’s face. It was the same look I used to get from him on the high school football field when he missed a block and I got my ass kicked by some defensive tackle I couldn’t avoid. Makes me realize how much I love this guy. Why? Because the last time that happened Squeak asked our QB to call the same play he had just got beat on. Our quarterback knew the next play, I knew it, Squeak knew it, hell even the defensive lineman knew (because Squeak told him before the play started) what was going to happen. Me, I’m thinking: it has been a nice life but I am going to die now. Inevitably, Squeak proceeded to destroy the other lineman and I made a nice gain through the gaping hole that used to be his body. Fuckin’ awesome!
So, as this dear old friend stood looking at me with pleading in his eyes, he bellowed at me: ”I need to use your bathroom. I broke mine!”
“Sure, OK!! What?!! Noooo! What the hell happened to yours?!!” But I was talking to air as Squeak had already set a land speed record to our guest bath. At this point, the only coherent thought I had left was: “Screw this. I am going back to my couch.”
I laid my rifle down beside me and crawled under the blanket. A little while later, Squeak came over and whispered: “Thank you” at me. I mumbled, “You are welcome, but if you make me get up again, I will never forgive you.”