by Ron Tufo
Doc leaned in the window of the Suburban and volunteered to stop at the compound and fill them in on both the kids staying with him and Mark coming with us. He said he had to make a run to the local variety store to stock up on some more canned goods anyway. No sweat. Frankly, I was relieved he would be the one telling Nancy and my dad that our son was going with me, anyway. Nothing motivates me like a bit of self-preservation. I readily agreed to that plan. I would, no doubt, have to deal with the consequences of that decision with both my father and my wife when we got back, but for now…road trip.
We decided to stay on the coastal route all the way down Maine and into New Hampshire. It had always been a meandering and scenic ride in a different time, and it would give us a chance to see more of what New England had become post-catastrophe. No one harbored any hopes, but we all thought it was certainly worth knowing how bad it was throughout the region.
Mark had my permission to call for a zombie pause and shoot out of the window with the .22 long carbine. He wanted to practice his marksmanship. We made it into a contest. Whenever we saw a Walking Dead wannabe, the guy who spotted it first got to take the shot. Kept score and everything. It was all fun and games until we got into Camden. Here is where Rte.1 narrowed considerably at the center of that town’s tourist trap. I had seen one target just before we got into the center. Squeak stopped the lead truck and I took my shot. Dropped it from forty feet away. Cool.
We were traveling slow because we were on what had become a single lane passage, and all of it partially blocked with wrecks. It was a lot like being on a metallic obstacle course. We turned into the center, and it was like the shot I had made called for the next runner in a game of Red Rover. “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Jamie right over!” Well about a bazillion zombified Jamies came pouring out of the various shops and eateries. We went from tumbleweeds through a deserted town to being surrounded in an ambush before we could even process the dilemma. All my fuzzy little brain could come up with for a solution was “Game Over.” Shit!
Squeak and Mer were at the head of the parade in the Suburban. Mark and I brought up the rear in the Ridgeline. Without a thought as what he was about to do to my shiny new set of American-made wheels, Squeak jammed it down into first gear and began to push the closest zoms into a roll of past-expiration-date meat. He almost made it through the narrow center, too. The pile was just too dense for the Suburban to push. He stalled just as the road started to climb. I could not get around to his front, so short of trying to push both the SUV and the wall of piled zombies, I couldn’t give him any help. I swung the wheel hard and started to take a side street out of the square. My plan was sound, even if my timing was suspect. I knew this area. I could bang a series of turns and come out in front of him. I heard him yelling at me as I drove away; something about, “You little pissant! Where are you going? Do not leave me here!” My daughter was looking at me like she would never see me again. Not a great feeling for either one of us.
Having been duly insulted, I felt it only appropriate that I return the favor. ”Listen you big wuss, hold on to your jewels for a second and I will reappear right in front of you. I can come in at an angle and take some of this mess away from your front bumper. You better damn well hope you haven’t fucked up the front end.”
I could see Meredith leaning out the passenger window and begin to take shots at one band of groupies that was getting too close for comfort. “Better hurry, dad. I am going to have to roll up the window in a minute to keep them out.” Nothing like a little pressure to keep that adrenaline rush going at full tilt.
They really were closing in on all sides. Thank god we only had to carom off a few badly positioned zombies on our circumvention of the square. I could feel the metal walls of my fenders denting as we pounded our way around the corners. We came around the last turn and could barely see the Chevy. It was covered in mottled grey. I could hear Meredith’s screams; they were well and truly trapped inside. It is a damn good thing zombies can’t get a good arm swing going or they would have broken through the window glass and into the cab. It must have been like sitting in a shark tank. They can’t get in, but you can’t get out, either, and eventually the “they can’t get in” part wasn’t going to hold up. Proverbial rock and a hard place!
I came up on Squeak and Meredith at as much angle as the road would allow me and began to shove the pile of zombies off the bumper. I could only push them so far and then I had to go back for another pass. It took a few minutes, but they were able to start inching forward again. One more pass and we could leave this mass of excrement behind us. Some of the still-mobile zoms were starting to pile onto the Honda. This party had to end soon or we would both be wheels in the air stuck.
As we backed off for the last time, Squeak turned over his engine and mashed it into low-low gear. He started to climb the hill, and we were so close behind, Mark could have leaned forward and climbed onto his rear bumper.
I don’t believe I have ever held my breath that long. We were free of Camden Square, almost to be renamed as Camden Cemetery, and climbing the hill. Squeak was yanking the wheel left and right along with lurching forward and making sudden stops to shake off his unwanted passengers. My poor, poor Chevy. Two brand spanking new vehicles were just about ready for the body shop and we hadn’t even made it fifty miles out of Searsport. This did not bode well.
It was at a time like this I really wished I had Gary with us. He would have never in a million years let me make a tactical error like this one, and I will shoot the first sumbitch who tells him that. We got off the coastal route posthaste. Face it, we now knew what we wanted to find out. There were still plenty of zombies. No question there. We picked up Rte. 90 westbound and headed out to the Maine State Highway southbound. Much more better!
Rte 90 is a typical east-west Maine road. Old, decrepit and empty, but at least it was devoid of zombies. What the hell? Not a single zombie meal for miles. It was a chance to not have to be on the lookout constantly. Unfortunately, it did nothing for our distance to goal. We did, however, make it to Rte. 95 south and were headed once again down toward Massachusetts.
The highways were a mess, too. I guess it was a pretty good trade off, though. Fewer places for the zombies to pull a sneak attack. Although it was messed up bad with wrecks, it was still passable. We had to stop often enough to push or pull totaled derelicts out of the way, but getting under and over bridges presented the biggest of our current problems.
Sometimes there was just so much carnage that the only way to deal with it was to bring up the Ridgeline and put the winch to work. We would put a lookout on either side and two of us would play tow truck. The first time we had to put this tactic into play, it took us almost an hour to clear away enough debris to get through. We tried using the off and on ramps to bypass the bridges, but they were in even worse shape.
It took us almost nine hours to get to the New Hampshire/Massachusetts border. Usually a three-hour tour, yes, maybe that was a Gilligan reference; I was under extreme duress. At this rate, we were running out of daylight way quicker than we were running out of miles to travel. Looking for a safe place to spend the night became our primary concern. Again, not planning for this possible occurrence had been a major oversight. Gary was never, ever, going to let me forget it.
I have done this ride so many times that I really do know where everything is. The next exit was the one for the Anna Jacques Hospital–a small place, but I was thinking how Aki and his family had been surviving up in the Waldo Country Hospital and figured it would be our best shot. Besides, it had a wing for the psychologically disturbed and all the windows and doors were barred. Do not even think of asking me how I knew that.
Mark and I were leading now, given that I knew where we were going. We reached the exit for the hospital and started up the ramp. We were just coming around the bend when there, smack in the middle of the road, was my favorite Indian chief. Longwalker quickly put his hands up in an urgent stopping motion, urgent because he prob
ably sensed I’d sorta momentarily consider blowing right through him.
“Hey Talbot, wanna slow down a bit so the cops don’t tag you for reckless Indian endangerment?” Just what I fucking needed. A smart-ass trash-talking Indian chief apparition. I slammed the brakes and I heard, “What the fuck, dad?” from the peanut gallery next to me. Then I heard nothing but the screeching of more brakes behind me. I braced for the impact, which, thankfully, didn’t come, although there were some choice words from back there in both base and soprano octaves. I’m glad they didn’t ram us; I don’t think I could have borne it if I had single-handedly caused the premature termination of my Suburban.
I got out of the still-running Honda and started to jaw back at Longwalker. “No way you could get down here by walking. Hell, we are not even in Maine anymore!”
“Yeah, I know. Shocked the mickon–“ (Yup, that is the Passamaquoddy word for shit) “–out of me, too. I have never appeared out of the Maine Coast before. Truth is, I really have no idea where or when I will make an entrance. I do always know why, though. It is always because something bad is happening. I mean always, Talbot. You get my drift.”
“Let me see if I understand this. You are a long-time dead spirit emanation of an old Indian warrior. You speak smack and you don’t know when or even where you will show up, but it will always be as a harbinger of something very bad. That about cover it?”
“Unless you have a pack of cigarettes I could have.”
“What the fuck did I do to deserve this crap? I just want to protect my family and friends.”
“No such luck, oh anointed one. For whatever reason, your family is the one chosen to make a last stand for humans up here. There are others who will do the same in other parts of the country and world, but the Talbots, my friend, are the ones who will make a difference in the Northeast. For better or worse. Oops. Looks like I am leaving now. Gotta go. I have no doubt I will see you again soon. Bye.”
And just like that, there was a bit of fog and when it cleared I was by myself in front of a slack-mouthed group of the three amigos.
In the deep-rooted belief that admitting to an occurrence makes it go away, I turned to Squeak and my kids. “What? You’ve never seen anyone talking to a ghost only he can see before?”
“Hey, Nails,” (Squeak only used my football nickname when he was really worried about me. Like when I got my face stepped on by a three hundred pound nose tackle. He knew it drove me to live up to my reputation.) “When this is over, you really need to spend some time in a rubber room right next to the one reserved for Gary.”
Frankly, I was worried for me, too. Hell, seeing ghosts does kinda qualify as a mental health issue. Nothing to be done for it, though. I knew I would replay my surreal conversation later in the evening when I’d had a chance to reflect on it, but for now I just wanted to park it in back of the brain areas that focused on football, food, and sex, which comprises most of the human male brain anyway, and get my group to a safe place. The middle of the highway wasn’t cutting it.
How do I say this? The entrance to the hospital was a joke. In actuality, there was no more entrance to the hospital, at least not one that could be seen, anyway. There was just a complete miasma of dead and soon to be dead bodies. A human sushi bar. We really couldn’t tell where the eaters stopped and eatees began.
Gary wasn’t there, so this time the honors of spewing first went to Mark. As long as he got the door open before he exploded, I was cool with that. It really was pretty gross. It very much looked as though a large number of people who had been in the hospital had tried to make a jailbreak of it and were met by the local zombie authorities at the front entryway. Whether they thought they could bull their way through or were just panicked enough to try anything, the results were calamitous.
There was fresh new blood mixed with old congealed blood, which told me that this fiasco may have happened more than once and was still happening. We could hear the gentle noshing of continued feasting from inside the pile of meat. Sickening doesn’t even begin to describe the sounds, smells, and visuals we were catching.
I leaned out the window and yelled to Squeak. “Man, make sure you stay upwind of this mess. Let’s circle around and find the other entrances.”
“You sure you still want go in there for the night? This place reminds me of a roach motel. Roaches go in but don’t come out!”
“No sweat man. I have a plan.”
Squeak whispered over to Meredith, “He may be your father, but I hate it when he says that because it means he has no freakin’ idea what he is doing.”
Meredith broke into a loud laugh. “We have known that about him since we were little kids. Some of his best ideas are made up on the spot. We have come to trust that he will get things figured out, though. You have to have faith in him. Here, watch this. Dad? What’s the plan?”
“I’m working on it, sweetheart.”
“You’re right, Meredith. He has no idea. Shit, I am not happy about this.”
The rear entrance to the hospital was an exact opposite to the carnage out front. Empty and unlocked. Go figure. We parked our vehicles at the bottom of the long stone steps. Obviously, these were never intended for patient use. Here Mr. smith, let me give your wheelchair a nice big push. The ride down may be a little bumpy, but you will have so much fun you will barely notice your broken hips!
Everybody grabbed their version of an overnight bag. I brought mine and another bag of not-necessarily-essentials for a short stay. I had a hunch while playing the “what if” game with myself that this stuff may be important to us come morning. Just like at Waldo, the ICU was on the top floor and was lockable. We placed Mer and Mark at the door while Squeak and I went in to clear the zone. There was only one room that had any activity in it–three zombies and one dinner plate. The zoms looked like they were in an eating contest, taking bites and scoping each other out to make sure no one was getting more or juicier parts than they were. If it wasn’t so disturbing it would have been funny. One female looked up at us while she was ripping into a leg; sinew and tendon were hanging from her rotting teeth. I started to raise my rifle but Squeak was way quicker. He had her double tapped before I even eyeballed down my barrel. The other two zombies were completely unfazed. I guess they figured there would be more for them.
I figured we would each take one of the remaining two. Four shots later, there was still an undead at the snack counter. We had both double tapped the same zombie. I looked at Squeak. “What the hell, dude. You shot the one on my side!”
Squeak had the good sense to look abashed as he knew the protocol and should have shot the one on his side first. Meanwhile, the zombette who now had a corpse all to herself finally noticed that more free food was in the room and was making her way down the deli aisle toward us. Four shots later and the room was clear. Back out in the hall, Mark yells to us: “Dad, do you guys need help? How many are there?”
Seeing as how I was never going to cop to the fact that we had used ten bullets to take out three zombies, I calmly yelled back, “Thanks, Mark. We’re good. We got them all.” There was no actual lie in that statement. I don’t like lying to my kids. Obscure truths, though? I got a million of those.
To Squeak, I stage whispered, “You back me on this or I will take you out while you are sleeping.”
His answer was expected. “Ron, you are a deeply broken individual.”
“Hey, it comes with the family gene pool. Goes back quite a ways, from my understanding.”
Having secured the ICU for the night, we set up a round of two hour watches and people got some rest. Absolutely none of it was as sound or as restorative as we all needed. The night was unexceptional but for the continuous munching that carried up from the ongoing festivities at the front entrance. Not exactly the soothing sounds of the ocean to fall asleep to, but like anything else, you get used to it. When my turn came to lie down, I couldn’t help but think of the adaptability of the human brain. You get used to hearing people getting e
aten. Fucking really?
The light of morning was welcome in that it meant we were still alive. Regrettably, it also brought zombies to every entrance of the hospital. Maybe they are capable of figuring some things out for themselves; if one entrance provided food, maybe the other ones will too. Not a pleasant realization, also not a pleasant reality. How were we going to get out?
Our transportation was about fifty feet away from our exit and one story down. We would stand no more chance of making it than did the folks who had tried to get out the front door. “Fear not, brave ones! I told you I was working on a plan. And I know none of you little feckers believed me either!” This was boldly delivered while I was giving them all the snickering eyeball of enlightenment!
“Let’s get up to the roof. We can make our escape from there.” I know that every single one of my intrepid little group was now thinking that my mind had made that final leap over to fantasyland. I was surprised, though, that none of them questioned me. Either they had complete faith in my ravings or they were just giving in to the inevitable outcome.
Once on the roof, my first order was a question. “Okay, who has the best throwing arm?” I was looking directly at my two kids. Squeak started to answer and I cut him down. “Man, it had better not be you. I have seen you duckwobble a football no more than ten yards on your best day and that’s only a couple yards farther than I can throw. If you are the best we have, this plan will not work.”
I noticed Mark start to raise his hand and I also noticed Meredith as she gave him the “I don’t think so, little brother” look. He tried to hide his hand behind his neck like he was just reaching to scratch–the universal cover move to an embarrassing situation.
I knew Meredith easily had the best arm in the family. I had watched her growing up as a kid throw stone after stone and hit targets I would have trouble hitting with my rifle. No one argued my decision when I handed her the length of cable with a hook on the end.