'Til Death Do Us Part

by Mark Tufo

  The light was blotted out every time a bulker entered the basement, as effectual as an eclipse. They grunted and groaned as they pushed through each almost wedging its enormous size in the doorframe. Rifle smoke filled the room quickly that and the blotted out light made finding targets difficult.

  “Dad, we need to pull back!” Ron shouted.

  “There is no ‘pull back’ its retreat from here, and we can’t leave them out there,” Tony said calmly to his son. “Get my grandsons to safety,” Tony added with a resigned sigh. The bulkers had halved the distance to the couch.

  “Dad?” Ron asked.

  “Do it!” Tony uncharacteristically yelled. He said it as he fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulling out two grenades that Mike had brought back.

  “What are you going to do with those?” Ron asked.

  “What do you think? Get your brother and my grandsons to safety.”

  Rifle shots were now a continuous volley as aiming was not necessary. The cement rumbled from the weight of the bulkers as they pushed ever forward.

  Even Ron had to admit the basement was lost, the next line of fallen bulkers would hit the couch and drive them into the wall where they would be pinned and helpless.

  “Let’s go!” Ron shouted, tapping Travis, Justin, and Gary.

  “Pops?” Travis asked after they had traveled a few feet away and he realized his grandfather wasn’t with them.

  “Holding the line!” Ron told him as he urged his nephew on. A tear fell onto the floor.

  The four had just rounded the corner and where within a few feet of Mad Jack who was urging them on when they lost their footing. The floor jumped up to meet them and all went silent as a giant explosion ripped through the house bringing some of it down upon itself.

  ***

  Mike stood no more than a foot from Eliza, no more able to control his movements than he had been that fateful night so many months before when she had given him the kiss of death. For that is what it had truly been, everything else that had happened had merely been in preparation for this moment. Tracy was held back by one of the truckers as she tried to get to his side. BT had a small arsenal of weaponry pointed at him, no one dared leave him to his own devices.

  “I do not know why this moment has eluded me. You are not supernatural…there is nothing extraordinary about you. You are merely flesh and bone, weak like all men. I do not see your God rushing in to help you. You are abandoned, and alone.”

  “Fuck you,” Mike spat out, struggling to have at least that small victory as she held him tight within her mental grasp.

  Kong watched fascinated, he knew that he would have been begging for her mercy were he in Michael’s shoes, yet the man still fought. He hoped Mike’s demise would be swift, but did not hold much stock on that assumption, Eliza held no ability for compassion.

  “Would you rather I kill your pretty little wife before I dispose of you?” Eliza asked.

  Mike was shaking with impotent rage. Eliza had his jaw clamped shut so that even a cutting remark could not be issued.

  Kong almost made the fatal mistake of helping. The moment was beyond tense as three lives hung in the balance. Mike, with his arms pinned against his sides and his fists balled up, was still somehow able to unfurl his middle finger. It was pointing downwards, but the message was not lost on Eliza.

  “Is that for me? Let me get a closer look.” Eliza said as she wrapped a small hand around Mike’s neck. She picked him up as if he were no more than doll. Mike’s legs began to buck as she cut off his air flow.

  “Stop!” Tracy screamed, trying desperately to get through the guards.

  “Your turn is coming, do not be in such a rush,” Eliza said, turning a cruel smile Tracy’s way. “Although I may allow my men a little fun first.”

  BT punched the guard nearest him in the temple. The man fell to his knees, BT pushed past the other two that had been watching Eliza between leers at Tracy. BT rushed at Eliza, she saw him coming and gripped tighter on Michael’s neck in preparation for the attack. As BT came at her, Eliza let loose a back hand that sent the man sprawling, his legs lifted off the ground from the force of the blow. He struck the ground in a non-moving heap.

  Michael’s vision was tunneling, his legs twitching violently in their death throes, his knee struck against Eliza’s chest a small tinkle as if a wine glass shattered could be heard over the din. Two spirits seemed to pull away from Eliza as she shrieked in horror.

  One was her twin in looks only, not countenance; the other was a Native America Shaman. He gained stature as he stood tall. Eliza backed up, still holding Michael by the throat using him as a shield to keep the doppelganger away. The shaman took in the scene around him, his eyes finally resting on the surprised face of Azile, who was still on the ground. He took his old gnarled hands and meshed them together. At first Azile did not understand his message, then it dawned on her.

  The truck drivers had moved back as the event unfolded.

  Azile stood. “I bind you, lost soul, to the one that has forsaken you.”

  Eliza’s head whipped around. “NO!” she screamed. “Kill her!”

  Azile looked around and quickly repeated her words. “I bind you, lost soul, to the one that has forsaken you.”

  “Kong, kill her!” Eliza yelled, even as her soul began to merge within her.

  One of Kong’s men raced towards Azile, a club raised high, Kong who had been momentarily stunned by the events came out of his daze and shot the man in the chest, the club clattered to the ground as he shouted.

  “Anyone else approaches and I’ll kill them too!”

  The shaman repeated the hand clasping gesture to Azile.

  “I bind you, lost soul, to the one that has forsaken you!” Azile screamed.

  Mike fell to the ground as the force and shock of the spell took hold within Eliza.

  “She’s mortal?” Tracy asked, never looking around to gather an answer.

  She pulled free from the man that had been holding her and was now moving away. Mike’s body was still and seemed devoid of life as she touched his face, he was so cold. In direct contrast, the anger within her was white hot. She reached down across his body and took his knife from the sheath attached to his leg; with one fluid movement she stood, spun and buried the Ka-Bar hilt deep into Eliza’s breast.

  “Till death do we part, bitch!” Tracy said as she twisted the knife.

  The confusion and pain that were etched in Eliza’s feature were quickly replaced by relief as she realized her unnaturally long life was coming to an end and then to sheer terror as Eliza glimpsed what her afterlife would entail.

  “It appears that eternity is not quite as long as you would have believed.” An evil voice said as it drifted up from and through the ground

  Tomas fell to his knees, shrieks of pain and loss in his voice. The shaman smiled sadly at Azile and walked towards a rhythmic drumming that only he could hear.

  BT turned his sore and battered body over enough to witness the entire event, the first thing that came to his mind was to sing a line from one of his favorite childhood movies. “Ding Dong. The wicked witch is dead.” He said before laying his aching head back down.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Mike Journal Entry 20

  I was shattered.

  I felt like a mirror image of Humpty Dumpty, so when I fell, my eggshell and my reflection were destroyed. I felt arms around me, I could hear bedlam, men were screaming, shots were being fired and I was slowly rising to consciousness. I was in the arms of the trucker Kong who was rushing to get me to a rig. I could see zombies running towards us as we ran, or at least he ran. BT was cradled in Tommy’s hands, parts of BT did not look to be moving, but I was having great difficulty focusing on anything as we bobbed.

  I came up from the depths of unconsciousness, a killer headache worthy of a twelve-pack of cheap beer hangover thrumming through my temples. I saw Tracy and Azile in the sleeper behind me, they seemed to be constructing a makeshift sling fo
r BT. Tommy had put my seat belt on as I kept finding myself pooling on the floor of the cab.

  “Fucking zombies, now we’ll show them!” Kong laughed as he pulled on his horn. Even the deep throated bass of his truck horn could do little more for me than allow me to make the pitchfork sign of rockers everywhere.

  The truck bounced around as Kong did his best to make zombies an integral part of the roadway system. With the passing of Eliza, her vials and the safety they offered were removed. Truckers that were slow to recognize this often found themselves under the assault of multiple zombies. The zombies that had been single-mindedly attacking Ron’s house relentlessly now pulled back when they saw no signs of food. Speeders and bulkers attacked the retreating truckers ferociously.

  As I slowly came back to the world of air breathers, I got the sense that the only thing keeping the rest of the men from bolting was Kong and his threats of retribution if they ran.

  The man was nuts, probably more so than me. The trucks were making short work of the zombies that dared come out, but they weren’t quite as clueless as we hoped, more and more of them would wait by the edges of the road where the trucks could not get and would only attack when the truck had to slow down and turn around or open the windows to fire rounds. I witnessed at least one trucker get pulled from his truck, I would have sworn that the zombie pulled the door handle, yet I was holding out hope that my oxygen starved mind had maybe missed a detail or two. I still locked my door though.

  “Shit,” Kong said as he pulled his pistol in. “Out of rounds. I miss my wife,” he said to no one in particular. “Do you think she still loves me?” he turned to asked Tracy. “I’ve done some things.” Whether looking for forgiveness from my wife or a higher power I didn’t know. “There’s a duffel bag in the compartment over your head could you get that for me?”

  With some effort she handed it past Tommy. Kong put the bag on his lap with a loud clang, he unzipped it, metal shone as he did so.

  “Big ComiCon fan are you?” I asked him as I looked down at a satchel of swords and large knives.

  “This isn’t that reproduction shit, this stuff is real,” Kong said, digging around through the contents.

  “What are you going to do with them?” I had an idea I just didn’t want to be right.

  “I should’ve been a better man. When others around me were weak, I succumbed. Instead of helping, I made things worse…in most cases much worse. Well today that changes, today I go out a better man, hoping that God and my wife can find it in their hearts to...”

  He didn’t finish as he opened his door, a large two-handed broad sword slashing back and forth violently. Blood spray coated the windshield and driver’s side door as he hacked off body parts with no more effort than a band saw would have going through balsa wood. Arms flopped to the ground, heads rolled away. Once or twice I saw him cut down zombies at the knees, but he was tiring and the zombies were just getting started.

  “Help him,” Tracy said in alarm.

  “He wants to die, is that what you want me to help him do?” I asked her.

  “He helped kill Eliza and he saved your life.”

  “Are we forgetting the little detail of why he was here to begin with?” I asked.

  “Fine, I’ll do it,” she said, making a move to come up front. “In the end he did what was right.”

  And the truly fucking scary part is, for a moment, I almost told her ‘go ahead, I won’t stop you’ and would have meant it. I reached over into the bag and grabbed two swords; they were smaller than the behemoth Kong was swinging.

  “When the fuck did you become a Ninja?” BT asked as he sat up with a grimace of pain.

  “Online correspondence classes,” I told him as I opened my door.

  “Be careful,” Tracy threw out there at the last moment.

  If you were about to immerse yourself among blood-thirsty zombies armed with only two swords, would you need the caveat to ‘be careful’ added in, or would that just be a given? Would we have needed to start telling electricians working on downed power lines while standing knee deep in flood water to ‘be careful’ or would they just get it?

  I hopped down, zombies started to coalesce. I moved away from the truck so that I would have the ability to swing my swords. The steel jumped in my hands as it made bone jarring contact; I now understood the reasoning behind Kong’s heavier instrument of destruction. I felt diminished from Eliza’s death, but I was still stronger than an average man. I was keeping the zombies at bay with a modicum of work. My efforts were for naught as I fought for inches to get over to Kong’s side. I was halfway past the grill of the truck when I heard him fall; it was more of a cry of thanks than pain.

  With the smell of blood, the zombies were momentarily pulled away from me. I hacked indiscriminately. Backs flayed open as I severed spinal columns, zombies hunched over as I cut through their powerful back muscles and they lost support. I almost dropped my swords when the powerful blatting of the truck horn sounded. I looked up to see Tracy frantically pointing behind me. Bulkers were bearing down, a herd of stampeding water buffalo would have been a more welcome sight. I would not make it back to my door, or Kong’s for that matter, not unless I could cut through the swarm that was eating him in time.

  I stepped up onto the bumper and onto the hood as the first of the big zombies rocked the rig. I nearly lost my balance until I dropped a sword and reached out to grab a windshield wiper. Bulker hands were reaching up and trying to seek purchase on any part of me so they could drag me down among them.

  “Hold tight!” Azile screamed as she took over Kong’s former seat.

  Again with the superfluous cautions. I reluctantly let go of my remaining weapon and gripped the lip of the hood. The truck bucked as Azile put it in drive and was trying to pull away from the carnage. A bulker had somehow got up on the bumper and was chewing vigorously through the sole of my boot. My leg was whipping back and forth as the monster shook its mouth trying to get a tasty tidbit free. I repeatedly kicked at its head with my free foot; it couldn’t have cared less as I slammed the side of its head.

  My leg pulled free as the bulker ripped the tread of my boot off. I pulled my legs up before he had a chance to start chewing on the bottom of my foot. The bulker didn’t care that my shoe bottom wasn’t food it tore through it and swallowed it as I watched over my shoulder. I turned back to look at the astonished faces of Azile and Tracy.

  “It’s climbing up the front isn’t it?” I asked them without daring to look back.

  Azile was nodding furiously.

  “Shit.”

  “Mike, it’s coming!” BT roared.

  “Not sure what you’d have me do, BT!” I replied.

  “Here goes nothing,” Azile said. At least that’s what the words looked like as she said them softly to Tracy.

  I had pulled up my legs so far that I was nearly horizontal to the windshield. I could hear the top of the hood denting in as the bulker approached. The truck picked up speed as Azile cycled through her gears. I wanted to warn her that we were on a dead end, but it goes back to the superfluous, the truck had to be approaching sixty or seventy miles an hour as Azile slammed on the brakes at nearly the same time the bulker gripped around my ankle.

  My fingers felt like they were going to snap off. I had them curled under the lip, my weight plus the bulkers and the drag of the braking was causing excruciating pain in my over-worked digits. The bulker had not been able to get as good a grip as I’m sure he would have wanted; the stuttering of the truck jumping and the inertia caused the zombie to slide down the front of the truck. And still the damned zombie nearly killed me as the truck went up and over the being, my entire body, save two fingers rose into the air from the force. Blood gore and half-digested body parts sprayed out from under the truck. I went to a place in my brain that said it was just the world’s largest ketchup packet, sure filled with, blood, bile, body parts and bones—but ketchup nonetheless. Another forty feet or so and we came to a blissful stop
.

  It would be an hour before I could completely unfurl my fingers and a few days until the dull ache would stop. I got down off the truck and walked to the passenger door with a noticeable limp due to my sole-less boot rather than any injury. Tracy had moved over so that I could get in.

  “Thank you, Azile,” I said as I cradled my hurt hands in my lap.

  “I’m sorry, Mike. I wasn’t thinking,” Tracy said, gingerly rubbing my purpling digits.

  “Is she talking about when she married him?” BT asked Tommy.

  “You want some Ben-Gay Mr. T?” Tommy asked.

  I could envision me wiping sweat off my brow while they were coated in the pungent concoction. “I’m good, thanks,” I told him.

  Zombies were getting scarce as were truckers, word of Kong’s passing was making the rounds among the remaining men and with their leader and the threats removed they were more interested in saving themselves.

  “Time to play the Pied Piper,” I told Azile.

  She got the rig turned around, and wasn’t going more than five miles per hour, continually honking her horn, zombies fell in step (or got run over, which was just fine) as we drew them away from Ron’s. Thousands had died over the last couple of days and still thousands remained. We had a few hundred with us, some would stay around the house and need to be dealt with, others would go into stasis and need to be dealt with at a later time, but for now the biggest threat to mankind was dead and I for one wouldn’t miss her.

  Azile drove over twenty miles away from the house until she picked up the speed to shake our entourage. I gave her an alternate way back to the house so that the zombies wouldn’t merely turn around and come back.

  “What now?” Tracy asked as we barreled down Route 1.

  “Mop up duty,” I hoped.

  As we pulled on to the street before my father’s I was (we were) wholly unprepared for the scene before us. Hundreds if not thousands of zombies had been destroyed under the heavy wheels of tractor trailers. It was beyond putrid, there was nearly a six-inch layer of compressed zombies on the roadway, so thick I didn’t think a snow plow would be able to sludge them off the roadway. Of all the smells I had encountered thus far during this apocalypse, this couldn’t even be measured it was so far over the top.