by Mark Tufo
I went to see what was in the unit. It looked like whoever had this particular space had been saving newspapers since the mission to the moon. Yellowing, dry, cracked paper stacked floor to ceiling in most places all the way to the rear of the unit.
“Zero for two,” Brian said, barely peeking into the second unit.
There was one small, white kitchen trash bag full of oven mitts in this one. “Who the hell does that? Spends what? Thirty, forty bucks a month to store oven mitts?” I could see if they came from maybe a defunct oven mitt store, but these were used. Most had grease or burnt food on them; none of them were pristine, and yes, I checked them all. And no, I didn’t touch them, I ripped the bag open and kicked them around, just trying to wrap my head around the person that put these here.
Brian was somewhere around “zero for twenty-two” when he stopped counting.
“Talbot, we’ve been here for three hours. Surely there’s a better way to waste our time. Maybe a museum or something. I’d rather go look at something aesthetically pleasing than rummaging around other people’s shit,” BT griped.
“Whoa! Got something!” Brian shouted from pretty far down the alleyway.
“Holy crap! When did he get that far from us?” I asked. We would have been able to get there sooner, but we had to skirt around mountains of debris that had been pulled from previous lockers.
Brian came out of the locker, holding two giant rifles.
“What the hell are those?” I asked him.
“Firearms,” he said proudly.
“They look like they shoot grenades,” Paul said, looking down the barrel.
“Those are pretty useless,” Mrs. Deneaux said, coming up to us. “They’re smooth bore muzzle loaders, they need black powder, I’d say a .50 cal ball, and have an effective range of about seventy-five yards, at the most. And that drops off significantly, depending on who is shooting the weapon.” She finished off looking directly at Paul, who bowed his head. “Plus, even if we had everything we needed, they take close to two minutes to reload.”
“Brian, I don’t know how much more time we can stay here trying this,” I told him.
“There’s weapons in here. I know there are,” he said with a measure of desperation.
“There probably are, but look at all these lockers! We could spend days here trying to find them,” I told him.
“Leave me someone to watch my back. I’ll keep looking and you guys can try some stores nearby.”
“I’ll stay,” Mrs. Deneaux said, lighting a cigarette.
I looked over to Brian to see what he thought; it was his back that needed watching. “Sure,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
“Alright, we’ll be back in a couple of hours. If something happens here, go back to the Big 5 store.”
“Got it,” Brian said, already digging into the next locker.
Mrs. Deneaux was sitting on the bumper with her head tilted up, soaking in the sun as much as her lungs soaked in the caustic carcinogens from the cancer sticks.
“Doesn’t much look like she’s watching anyone’s back,” BT said as we walked out of the storage facility.
“We’ve got to get some wheels,” Paul said nervously. “I’m too old to run.”
“Buddy, remember we played on the high school football team together? There was a reason you were the quarterback and not a running back.”
“Not much of a scrambler then?” BT asked Paul.
“You both know what you can do with my ass,” Paul stated.
“Paul, to be fair, I watched a few of your games back then. I think you could beat Dan Marino in a foot race,” Gary said in all seriousness.
I started laughing. “Wasn’t he in the league for like seventeen years?”
“Something like that,” Gary answered.
“I think he had about seven yards rushing total for all those years. We probably should make getting a car a priority.”
“I like it much better when I’m not the object of ridicule. Should we talk about Mike’s first girlfriend?”
“Don’t you dare!” I said, spinning on my heel to face him.
Paul threw his hands up in mock surprise.
“Let’s just find a car,” I said, trying to change the subject.
We had walked about a hundred yards before anyone spoke again.
“So what about her?” BT asked.
“Paul, there’re lines in the sand and once they’re crossed, you can’t come back.” He didn’t seem fazed. “Should I bring up…”
Paul cut me off. “Mike, you swore on your word that you wouldn’t ever bring that up again.”
“We have an understanding then?” I asked him. Paul nodded eagerly.
“Damn! Just when this was getting interesting,” BT said, smiling, happy that he had just stirred the hornets’ nest.
There were plenty of cars abandoned on the street, most with the keys still in them, but the tanks were drained dry. These people had left in a hurry, not even bothering to shut their cars off. Some unlucky few had been eaten where they sat. Sometimes their bodies were half dragged out, snagged by their seatbelts as they were devoured alive. Some had telltale bullet holes in them and had been wholly left alone from the main predator that now prowled the earth; but the lesser scavengers still had to eat. Birds invariably went for the softer-tissued eyes; just one more reason to hate the flying vermin. Rats, I guessed from the droppings, were mostly concerned with chewing through whatever footwear the people had been wearing so they could get to the feet. The meat-stripped feet and eyeless dead, for some reason, were more disturbing than those that had been stripped clean by the zombies.
Gary was right behind me. He had one hand on my shoulder so that I could guide him as he kept his head pointed heavenward. His gagging had been non-stop since we had come across this snarl of dead in the center of town. The worst of the smell had long since passed and the bodies began to resemble something more along the lines of human jerky. But it was still no Yankee Candle store out here.
“What the hell happened here?” Paul asked.
“It looks like zombies came and whoever was shooting didn’t care where their bullets landed,” I said.
Gary took this moment to throw up on my back. “Are you kidding me?” I asked as I immediately handed my rifle to BT so I could take my light jacket off. I swear I could still feel the runny liquid rolling down between my shoulder blades.
“I…I can wipe it off,” Gary offered as he bent over to get the jacket I had just dropped.
“Leave it,” I told him. And that was right before he heaved all over it again.
“Sorry,” he said with a green-tinged smile.
“Is there anything on my shirt?” I asked BT.
“Aw, man,” BT said turning me around.
“Don’t fuck with me, man. I’m barely functioning right now thinking about this.”
“You’re fine,” BT said, laughing as he gently slid his hand down my back and mirrored the feeling of warm stomach bile.
I jumped away. “Paul?”
“You’re fine, man,” Paul said, smiling.
“I’ll tell them,” I said desperately.
“You’re fine!” Paul reiterated.
“You sure you don’t want this?” Gary said, picking it up by the right sleeve, just about the only part that wasn’t coated in his stomach lining.
“You bring that over here and you’ll be walking home.”
It was a few minutes and maybe a quarter mile later when we came across our first promising mode of transportation. It was an old Chevy Cavalier right at the outskirts of town. Both curbside doors were open and there were some personal belongings stowed in the backseat. A small house with the front door ajar was only a few short feet from the car.
“Looks like they never made it out in time,” Paul said with some sadness and regret.
“The keys in the ignition?” I asked Gary, keeping an eye on the doorway like I expected the occupants to come rushing out, demanding to kno
w what was going on.
“No but there’s a box of ammo on the dash.”
“That’s promising, what caliber?”
“30-30.”
“Good hunting round,” I said. The door was intimidating. It was a black, gaping wound into a world I didn’t feel that I wanted to enter. It was a normal setting, overlaid with the surreal. “Something’s not right.”
BT did a quick three-sixty. “Nothing around, Mike,” he said in all seriousness.
“No it’s in there,” I said.
“Forget it then, let’s move on,” he said.
“There’s a car, which probably has gas because they were packing it to get the hell out of here and at least one rifle. We need both badly.”
“Gary, you’re going to stay out here and watch our backs.” It felt strange protecting my big brother, but that was exactly what I was doing.
“I’ll go in first.” I took a big breath and gulped down my fear. “We ready?” I asked BT and Paul.
BT nodded tersely; Paul didn’t even acknowledge my question, but he was right on BT’s heels as we entered. First, we were in the living room, which was stacked with suitcases and multiple bags that would have never fit into that car, even if there were no passengers. But I could tell by the toys strewn around the house, that would not be the case.
“Who cares about things when you’re trying to save your life?” BT asked softly. “They probably would have got out of here if they weren’t trying to save this,” BT said disgustedly as he pushed over a George Foreman grill stacked on a couple of the boxes that looked like they were getting ready to take with them.
To be fair, it looked like one of the top-of-the-line models, but I’m not sure when they thought they were going to get a chance to cook a hamburger, or worry about the fat they would end up eating because it wasn’t draining down into the little drip pan. Don’t get me wrong, there were possessions that I absolutely cherished when the world was still spinning somewhat on a normal axis. But life and the preservation of it top the list. I have yet to come across a Star Wars Astromech figurine that could ever replace the love I have for my kids, my wife or my Henry. But since they were all safe, I did have a pang of remorse that I had not been able to save at least one of the little R2 units I had.
“I see legs,” Paul said, moving over to the far side of the room. He was looking down a narrow hallway. “They’re not moving,” he added as we rushed to his side, rifles at the ready.
“Is that blood?” BT asked, looking over my head.
The hallway was in the shadows and the rug that was down may at one time have been taupe-colored, but years of use had left it something closer to brown and now something stained it even darker by the doorway where the legs were jutting out.
“My guess is yes,” I said. A cloying stench clung to the walls of this house; a blinding dose of claustrophobia struck quickly, lingered for long seconds and then began to diminish. “Wow, that sucked,” I said. Paul and BT, who had suffered no such attack, looked at me questioningly.
“I’ll go,” Paul said, trying to bolster his nerve.
“I’ll do it, this was my stupid idea.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” BT said.
The five steps it was going to take me to get down the hallway were worse than at Fitzy’s house. At least, this time there wasn’t any techno music. But maybe that would have helped drown out the sound of my heart trying to blow through my rib cage.
“Talbot?” BT whispered from the end of the hallway.
I threw an A-OK sign over my shoulder although it really meant shit. Something bad happened here, even above and beyond what you might think in this situation. I kicked what I figured were a man’s legs judging by the clodhopper boots he (it) was wearing. No movement yet, I waited a few ticks more, making sure this wasn’t the newest brand of sleeper we’d been encountering more and more of. I moved in a half step further, my foot coming down on the hardened rug--the blood, barbecue sauce, and ketchup having completely dried. “Keep telling yourself that, Talbot,” I said as my foot sunk into the sticky fibers.
I turned the corner into the bedroom, wholly unprepared for what I witnessed. God had died, pure and simple. Dad had blown the left side of his head completely off. It looked so clean, like it was one of the cut-aways you used to see at the doctor’s office. “Here, kiddies, is what the inside of your brain looks like when you place a high velocity round up and through the soft palate. See the separation in tissue as the bullet travels through the jelly-like material of your thoughts?” But this was just the beginning of the nightmare.
Across the room lay a crib. I said a silent prayer to a silent master, and all I received was a silent response. A small, blue fist reached up, the fingers not yet deft enough to do much more than clench and unclench in an unending struggle to reach a food source it could not attain. I glided across the room like I was on a moving walkway.
“Whaddaya got, buddy?” a nervous Paul asked. I could hear him approaching.
“If you value anything that resembles sleep for the rest of your days on this planet, Paul, do not come any closer,” I told him. I would swear I could hear his boots screeching in the carpet in an attempt to halt his forward momentum even faster.
“It’s a kid, right?” BT asked. “Aw, man, it has to be a kid. Is the kid dead, Mike? Did the dad eat it? This is horrible. Let’s get out of here, man,” BT said, very subdued.
The baby, an infant of maybe four or five months, was emaciated. Small bits of one of his parents lay scattered around him, but this thing hadn’t eaten anything more than some errant bugs since December. Its eyes, which seemed sallow and sunken, snapped open when it saw me leaning over its small bed. One small tooth poked through the upper gum. It must have latched on for dear life to be able to break through skin on whichever unlucky parent it had gotten a hold of. It began to rock back and forth, trying to get closer to me, strange gurgling noises bubbling forth from its lungs.
“What is that?” BT cried. “The kid is alive?” I could hear BT coming.
“It’s not alive,” I said flatly, my eyes fixated on the baby’s.
“I…heard…him,” BT said haltingly. “Oh sweet, sweet Jesus,” he finished when he realized what I was in the room with.
A feeling of intense hunger raked across my head, but that was the furthest thing from my mind. But not the mind of the one you’re looking at my subconscious piped in. “HUUUUUNNNNNNGGGGGRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” it said, latching on to the word I had associated with its feelings. Apparently, it was a two-way street. “HUNGRY!” it shrieked over and over. I blew four holes into its head before the echoing in my brain subsided.
BT was in the room within seconds, picking me up under my arms and pulling me out of there.
“It was talking to me,” I kept mumbling, long after BT had deposited me on the curb outside.
“You alright, brother?” Gary asked, sitting down next to me.
“I don’t think I even know what that word means anymore, Gary.”
“Bad in there?” he asked earnestly.
I was half a beat away from coming back with a sarcastic, “You think?” But why prove how much of a dick I already am? He was just trying to help.
“Got some guns,” BT yelled from somewhere in the house.
I knew in the grand scheme of things that was good news, but it did little to part the veil that I felt had slipped between my eyes and the rest of the world.
Gary got up. “Any ammo?” he yelled.
“Some,” Paul yelled out an upstairs window.
“Do you think God is getting me back?” I asked Gary.
“Huh?” he asked, trying to figure out what I was asking. “What would God be trying to get you back for?”
“I’m not sure I’ve been a great person, Gary.”
“We all have things we’re not proud of, Mike,” he said, turning back towards me.
“Did you ever chase Bible-thumpers off your property?” I asked him.
&nbs
p; “Um no, but now I’m intrigued.”
“It was a Saturday morning, couldn’t have been much past nine a.m. and I had drunk to my liver’s content the night before.”
“Hung over then?”
“Understatement. I think I was still drunk.”
“Eww, that’s rough.”
“Tell me about it. Tracy and I had actually gotten into a good-sized fight the night before, something or other about me being drunk.”
“Go figure,” Gary said.
“I know, right?!” I responded, thinking he was agreeing with me, (but now that I’m writing this, I think he was actually coming down on her side.) “So I’m in bed, sleeping my drink off when the doorbell rings. I threw my arm over to the other side of the bed, looking for Tracy to answer the door, but she had already left with the kids to do some errands. I figured it might be some of the kids’ friends and they would get the message when I didn’t answer the door. So I shut my eyes, and not ten seconds later, they rang the doorbell two quick times.”
“What were they thinking?” Gary asked.
“I know, right?!” I was still under the impression he was siding with me, but looking at his written response takes on a whole new meaning. “So I’m in bed and thinking the little shits have one more chance at redemption before the wrath of God comes thundering down the stairs and gives them what for. I shut my eyes again against the hurtful rays of the sun, peeking around the shades. Another two blasts on the doorbell.”
“Kind of like the bells of Notre Dame.”
“Are you giving me shit, Gary?” I honestly asked because he was so dry in his delivery, I couldn’t tell. He shook his head vigorously. “But yeah, it kinda was like those bells, my head was splitting, my vision was blurry, I had to piss like a race horse, and my stomach felt like I had drunk a pint of bacon grease after eating chili dogs.”
“That doesn’t sound too good, Mike.” Gary said, starting to look a little green-tinged.
“Sorry, brother.” I had to remember Gary did not have the strongest stomach.
Go on, he motioned with one hand; he kept the other up close to his mouth.
So I ripped the door open, my gaze downward, expecting to yell at some little puissant about bothering grown-ups on their day off. What I got instead were two women and one man.”