Stronghold

by Ron Tufo

  Gary beat me to the response, “Duh!”

  In typical Talbot lady high fashion, she hit him with her smarmy smile that indicated, “Okay, dude, you got a free one. Don’t think you can get away with it again.” Gary takes his shots where he can, as do we all, but we have also learned it is not a health-improving quality to push your luck with Talbot women. Sometimes it amazes me that my brother Mike is still alive, given what Tracy is capable of doing to him when he gets out of line.

  A quick plan was thought out to lengthen our cable and get it wrapped around a bridge pillar to pull ourselves out of the mess we were in. Getting out of the Suburban so we could get to work was a teensy bit harder than we expected. Not only were the zombies frozen, they were also frozen to each other and to the metal of the vehicle. Moving one at a time was not a possibility. Had to move a whole bunch of them at once. Multiple efforts at opening one of the doors had resulted in only gaining a couple of inches of space.

  “What about the hatchback?” I commented. We only have to get that to open up, not out, like the doors. Maybe we can get that cleared enough to squeeze through.”

  I want to kiss the engineer who thought to put some power controls on the inside of the hatchback directly under the window. You could access these by prying the flexible plastic molding open just a little bit. Stick your finger inside and hit the mechanism in the right spot and voila!

  Now the question was: who was going to crawl through the zombies to get out and open the SUV doors?

  Both Gary and Meredith said it together this time. “Your idea. You know the rules. Your idea, your action.” Will I ever learn to keep my big mouth shut! No wonder Gary bites his tongue so often.

  I got the hatchback window open just like the cheat book says, but had to use both legs to push it free of zombies, all the while praying that they were indeed frozen solid. There were about ten of them up against the hatchback. They tumbled backward and two managed to remain standing by the sheer geometry of being in high snowbanks. Felt like I had just left a 7/10 split on bowling league night. The only way out was to crawl through the bunch of them. Crawl was exactly what my skin was doing as I made my way out of the vehicle. If even one of them had some motion still available to them it was sayonara Mr. Talbot, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it except trust cold luck. We had enough ammo to blast them all to Kingdom Come as soon as I could get them far enough away from the SUV, so I wouldn’t be putting any holes in that, too, or blowing what was left of my eardrums.

  When I was a kid in the city, we played some vicious games of “Run The Gauntlet,” like in the old Western movies. Your buddies would line up in two rows with only a few feet in between each row and you would have to run through them to prove you were a man. Of course, they would be punching the crap out of you as you went by. Some kids never made it. Some just got in to a fistfight with the kid who punched them too hard. I never thought, as an adult, that I would be playing that game again. (Be the first kid on your block to own the newest Zombie Version of Crawl the Gauntlet! Get yours first before they are sold out!)

  This will not go down in the highlight film as one of my all time favorite activities. The only thing that kept me moving through this frozen stew of goo was that if I stopped and they began to thaw…nope, won’t even be considering that possibility. Besides, the sooner I was out, the sooner I could start shooting.

  It really wasn’t gory because they were frozen through and through. Just had to keep pulling the trigger and making sure I holed each one right between the eyes. In a way, it seemed grossly unfair. When they were mobile, I at least had a reason to shoot them. Now that they were zomsicles, it just didn’t seem right. Kinda weird.

  “Dad, I think you better shoot a little quicker. I‘m pretty sure this one up here just moved.”

  “What sweetheart? I couldn’t hear you over the gun shots. You said you want to move? Why? I thought you liked it in Maine.”

  “Dad, you have to shoot faster!”

  “Honey, if I was driving any faster we probably would have flipped over.”

  “To hell with this, Uncle Gary, reach over and give me some juice. I‘m getting the windows down and taking these out before they thaw anymore.”

  “What? You didn’t want eggs for breakfast yesterday, so I made you a bagel.”

  Meredith mumbled back, “I am so making him use Grampa’s hearing aids when we get home.”

  Buried so deep that it was under the spare tire was the brand spanking new extra winch cable. Bless you, dad! We all learned our paranoid survival tactics from the master and he still carries the torch. He has a short list of things you never leave home without. An extra length of cable is right at the top. Let other people make sure of clothes, provisions, that sort of stuff. He was going to make sure his oldest and most favorite son (most of the time, anyway) was going to have what he would need to survive when things went all to hell.

  With a double length of coiled steel, we were just able to anchor it to the nearest pillar. I posted Gary and Mer at the bridge and made sure they were far enough from the cable if it snapped not to get cut in half. (I’m sorry Nancy, we were doing so good until the cable broke and turned Meredith into twins.)

  Getting out of this hole was not a sure bet. The cable was designed to move a rolling load that we were just about maxing out. Even with the engine running and the Suburban in gear, I really wasn’t getting much traction to aid the winch along. It was agonizingly slow work. Took almost an hour to get halfway up, which brought our second problem into play. Had to stop and unhook the mounted winch cable from the extra one; the coupling would not go through the guide mechanism if they remain hooked together. No big deal, right? Well, it kinda is when you are on a thirty-degree incline and your vehicle wants to slide backward the moment you stop pulling it forward. We needed something to block the rear tires and hold us in place. Going to have to talk to my father about putting chock blocks on his list of survival tools.

  “Hey Gary, you remember when we were kids and you asked me to stand behind your bicycle while you straightened the handlebars so it wouldn’t roll backward on you?”

  “Yeah, I remember that. It rolled back anyway right over your foot. I got a laugh out of that.”

  “Well, little brother, Karma may take her own sweet time, but eventually she gets there. You are going to help me get a couple frozen entrees under each rear wheel to hold the Chevy from sliding backward.”

  “No way, Dude. Again, your idea.”

  “Nice try, chucklehead, but it was your idea a long time before now. I’ll get the left, you take the right. Try not to drag any that have already started to defrost. They may not be too happy about being used as a tire impediment and probably won’t keep the Chevy from skidding back down anyway.”

  The zombie trick worked like a charm. As the big SUV cleared the last of the ditch, it was able to pull itself back onto the highway, and none too soon. Gary was busy looking for fuel cans that had jettisoned off the roof the night before and was having some luck, too. He had found two of them and thought he saw the bump of a third in the snow.

  Being the kind and considerate older brother that I am, I softly mumbled, “Pssst, Gary, there is a zombie following you. Pssst.” I didn’t get his attention, and I really didn’t want to break his concentration. We really needed that fuel.

  A little louder now, almost at conversational volume, “Hey, man…you now have two zombies following you.” Ah, fuck it. Blam! The closest zom went down and so did my brother. It was the most classic snow-based faceplant I will ever see.

  Even I can’t print the entire string of invectives that left his mouthly orifice. Funny as hell, though. He was not pleased. “You know you aren’t half the shot I am and yet you waited until that zombie was this close to me? What the fuck were you thinking?!”

  “Hey man, there is still another one. How much do you want to piss me off before I decide to shoot this one too?”

  You know, he actually found t
he third fuel can and started to haul ass up the ditch as fast as he could. Not so much to get away from the zombie, but to give me all the clearance he could for my next shot. I think he figured one good shot a day was just about my limit.

  Reaching Melanie’s apartment was an enormous hope deflator. Just about the entire neighborhood had burned to the ground. We slowly cruised through the wreckage. We certainly needed a few minutes to figure out what our next step would be. As we rounded the last corner, we came to a triple decker with a couple of people standing on the third floor porch. Hey, real people!

  Meredith was the first to yell up to them. “Hi there. We are looking for my sister, Melanie. Has anyone seen her? Blonde. Pretty. Mouth like a sailor.”

  “You mean Mel from around the corner? That girl could out swear anyone I have ever met. No, haven’t seen her since before the fire.” The others shook their heads. “No idea. I don’t believe she was here when the fire broke out, though, if that helps any.”

  Another neighbor piped up: “Have you guys heard any news? Like what the fuck is happening? I mean, we’ve seen the zombies. Some idiot figured it would be a good thing to burn the buildings down and kill them that way. Fucking stupid jerk. I do think he took some of them out, though.”

  “No, man. We don’t know anymore than you. If any government survived, they are still hiding their political asses somewhere and haven’t been any help to us. Just want to find my sister. Do you guys need any help?”

  “Naw. Thanks anyway. We got plenty of food, weed and beer. Zombies haven’t bothered us much here on the third floor since we took out the all the stairs from the first floor up. Sucks with no TV though.”

  We thanked them and drove on a bit before we pulled over. Well, where to next, Mer? And geez, those guys didn’t seem too worried about what has been happening, did they?”

  “Dad, they were so stoned I was surprised they could talk to us. Did you hear what they said? They took out the stairs. I don’t think they could or would be able to think past their next joint. I say we go to Mel’s best friend’s house. It’s not far from here at all.”

  We approached the center of town and smacked right into the annual Zombie Day parade. We stopped just outside and watched them going around and around the stone gazebo in the middle of the square. Too fuckin’ weird. Then we saw why and it became even weirder. Two tweeners were on bicycles and were leading the zoms on a merry slow motion chase. Their older friends were up on the second floor of the corner store, Zeke’s Variety. (What else! Seems like a small town is not a small town until they have a Zeke’s Variety store.) They were taking out a few zombies every time the bikes passed by. It was like a carnival game. I don’t believe they had any idea of all the things that could go south in a heartbeat during their debased little amusement. We just sat out of sight and watched.

  “Ron, don’t you think we should do something here?”

  “Nope. They seem to be having fun,” I said with a sick smirk. “What the hell would we do, anyway? They must feel they are safe enough, and far be it from me to tell them otherwise. Nope, ain’t touching this one. We need to get to Spring’s house and find Melanie.”

  I stayed cool, but I can’t begin to tell you how really freaked out I was by what we had just seen. The world was in more trouble than it had ever been and this is the way humans reacted? Let’s get stoned or let’s play Zombie Shoot Around? I know I have said it already, but maybe it was high time to replace humans with another top of the food chain species.

  We parked in front of Spring’s and paused a moment to see what other bizarre happenings might be waiting for us in this eerie shoestring of a town. The more we looked around, the worse it looked. Yuck! Now here was an honest to goodness apocalypse scene. Blood and bone were strewn everywhere. It had been a fight of epic proportions. If I had to guess, it looked as though all the remaining live people had gathered in this neighborhood for the final standoff. No wonder those that were left did not have much fear. It was all used up. Spring’s front yard resembled a Nazi concentration camp where they were piling bodies after the most recent gassing. There was so much death just at this house alone, it was too awful for me to make any snide remarks about it. It brought the whole zombie thing into its terrible truth. As gruesome as it was, I still had to make us go through the entire house and look for Melanie. No matter what, I had to know.

  It was arguably the most horrific thing I have ever had to do. Even my smart mouthed brother was quiet and stoic. Meredith was putting on a brave face for us, but I could see in her eyes that she was losing hope of finding her sister alive, if she had been caught up in something like this mess.

  Mer was in a bedroom on the second floor and Gary was covering her. I was right behind them and just getting ready for my daily stomach salvo when I saw Meredith bend down to retrieve something.

  She came up with a bloody bracelet. I’m thinking, Mer, sweetheart, this is probably not the best time and place to be treasure hunting, when she turns to me and says, “Dad, this was Melanie’s. I would know it anywhere. Dan had it made just for her. She would die before she took it off.”

  She saw my face contort in pain and sadness. “I’m sorry, dad. That was not the way I meant it.”

  “I know, honey. I know. But I think you may be right no matter how you meant it to sound.”

  The next few moments of stillness were broken by Meredith. “Dad, I don’t see Melanie anywhere in this room. It may have just got snagged off her wrist by something.” I had satisfied myself also that my eldest daughter was not in this room. There remained the tiniest spark of hope that she was alive.

  Gary took the lead in the house search from that time forward. If Melanie was to be found here, he was right in thinking that he best could handle being the first to see her remains, if they could be identified at all. Both Mer and I reluctantly agreed with his logic. Personally, I really don’t think I could have handled it at all.

  Searching the rest of the house was like being in a nightmare that just kept getting worse. Mer stepped right into a chest and sunk up to her calf in the hole that had been made by some heavy gauge shotgun at ridiculously close range–inches, not feet. That wasn’t half as bad as the raspy groan that followed. She tried and failed to pull her rotting organ covered leg out of the hole with a squishy sound, much like lifting a boot out of some thick, slurpy mud. At the sound of another groan, a head lifted to get a bite of her stuck leg.

  My brother yelled at her: “Mer, do not move your leg!”

  In an hysterical outburst she cried, “Don’t move my leg! What are you, fucking nuts?! This thing is trying to bite me!”

  “I know. I know. But the only thing holding its head away from you is the fact that you are standing on its chest.”

  “Uncle Gary, I am not standing ON its chest. I am standing IN its chest.”

  “Cover your ears, turn away, and open your mouth so you don’t rupture your eardrum. Do as I say, now.”

  A double tap later and Mer was allowed to yank her ribcage-caught foot out of the chest cavity.

  The only condolence I had for her was, “You know you’re riding in the back seat until you get cleaned up, right?”

  We completed the rest of our search with a few more not-quite-dead zombies, a whole lot of very dead humans, and thankfully, no eldest daughter.

  Getting back out into some fresh air was the best part of what was left of the day. There were no more places to look for Mel here, and while there was still a bit of daylight left, I wanted to be gone from this hellhole. Even with the attacks we had been through at our own compound, the human death toll had been so minimal compared to what we found in this one small town. Here, people had been ready and willing to fight and still they had been slaughtered. The number of zombies must have been staggering compared to anything we had been able to hold off. If this was representative of even moderately populated areas, then being where we were in a really small rural Maine town had been our saving grace.

  Lost in m
y melancholy thoughts, I didn’t notice the mist that had settled in its favorite place, the hood of my Chevy. I was so not looking forward to a shadowy conversation with the Chief.

  “Hello, Talbot. You are getting to be a tough person to find.”

  “What do you want, Longwalker? We have had a tough day. And why are you so indistinct?”

  “We are getting a little too far from the coast. The magic seems to have its limitations too, much like a certain paleface I know.” Look, Talbot, I don’t enjoy these little exchanges any more than you do. I just do what I’m told and then it’s back into fog. You are headed for some trouble.”

  “What, like it’s been a fun-filled see the sights, eat your fill, and get laid every night pleasure cruise up until now! Are we having fun yet? Look, man, if you are telling me to head back to Maine, don’t even think about it. Did that once, and even though you were right, it is probably going to cost me my marriage and maybe my daughter’s life. There is no good side and bad side to these discussions anymore. There is just bad side and worse side. And that’s all you got? ‘Talbot, you are headed into some trouble.’ Every day is some trouble, Longwalker. Only difference is some days are considerably worse than others.”

  Longwalker patiently waited until the short rant was over. If he was waiting for an apology, he would be there awhile. I had really had enough of this shit.

  “Try to keep your mouth in check, little man. Where you are going, it may save your life.”

  Mer and Gary were standing on the porch whispering to each other. Never caught any of their words, but I can damn well guess it wasn’t about the weather.