by Mark Tufo
The kid instantly looked like he deflated.
Mary appeared a little heartbroken at the sight of her son.
“See? What did I tell you about his ‘plans?’” Gary said.
“Wait a second. I need Josh, but not in any way that exposes him to the zombies. I need his skills and a radio-controlled car, if he’ll do it.”
Go on, Mary motioned with her hand.
I laid the rest of it out there. Josh was immediately on board; he seemed actually pretty excited about it. Mary took a few minutes longer, trying to think of any way in which this exposed her son to anything close to danger, but she finally placed her stamp of approval on it.
“I’m going with you,” Gary said.
“In your condition?” I asked him. “I think not.”
Mary nodded with my words.
“You made your bed, brother, now you need to lie in it,” I said cryptically.
I pushed away from the table, placing my dishes in the sink. I thanked Mary for the meal. I would have normally waited for the morning to launch my ingenious idea, but the moon was nearly full and there were no clouds. It was a fairly bright night and I wanted to get BT back into the fold as soon as possible. The big guy was probably scared to death without me.
Gary found me about an hour later. I was in a small sitting room on the south side of the house. I was alternating between staring out the window at the zombies that periodically walked by, and stretching out my muscles for the endeavor they were about to undertake.
“You sure about this, brother?” he asked me.
“Of course not,” I told him.
“I’m serious,” he said.
“So am I,” I answered.
“What about back-up?” he asked.
“I appreciate it, Gary, I really do. Listen I’m no track star and that goes double for you. I won’t get to BT if I’m looking back for you.” Gary looked down. “And hey, if something happens to me, would this be the worst place in the world to wrap up the remainder of your days?”
“You’ve always been like a younger brother to me,” Gary said.
“Kiss my ass,” I told him.
“You be careful.”
“I will, I always am.”
Gary snorted. “Now I know you’re lying, because you’re insulting my intelligence.”
“Go find Mary; maybe she has some tea that can help you with that.”
Gary left and I was once again alone with my thoughts. I finished stretching quickly because no one should be exposed to my thoughts for too long.
I was as ready as I was ever going to be when I came out of that room. My head, however, was still clouded with doubt for what I was about to do. Why did everything always seem like a good idea right up until launch time? Then it seemed just about the craziest thing ever.
“Mom? Any words of wisdom?” I asked, looking to the heavens.
I could picture her saying, “What the hell are you thinking?” What response would I have to that? Thinking had never been my forte. There were a multitude of reasons why I did not build rockets when the world was slightly more normal.
“The car won’t flip?” I asked Josh.
He looked at me like I should leave that up to the pros.
“What are you eating?” I asked, looking at his sandwich. It smelled really good, but it looked like warmed-over vomit.
“A peanut butter and maple oatmeal sandwich,” he said between big bites. He was busy adjusting something on the chassis.
“Oatmeal?” I asked. Josh never looked up.
“He loves it,” Mary said, shrugging her shoulders.
“So this won’t flip?” I asked again, not wanting to look at his train wreck of a sandwich anymore.
Oatmeal leaked from the sides of the bread as he stared up at me. “Have you been listening to me at all?” he asked testily.
“His wife says that a lot,” Gary said from the couch.
I turned to flip him the finger, but Mary was boring holes in me, so I thought better of the gesture. It ended up being a half-hearted wave, which he returned eagerly.
“It can’t flip over because there is no top or bottom. I designed it that way so if it went over a bump and flipped over it would never get stuck.”
“That’s awesome,” I said, picking up his engineering marvel which was basically just four oversized tires attached to a chassis. “Have you ever gotten it stuck?” I asked, turning the machine over. He didn’t immediately answer, and I moved the machine so I could get a better look at the boy. “Josh?”
“Well not stuck, really,” he hemmed and hawed.
“Feel free to keep going,” I urged.
“Well, I’ve had some problems with this wheel,” he said, grabbing what was at this moment the front left, but at some point could be the front right, back left and/or back right. Yeah, it didn’t make much sense to me at the time either. In my world, front was front, rear was rear.
“Um, so what kind of problems?” My idea’s value was beginning to plummet.
“You really shouldn’t badger the kid,” Gary said.
“Badger the kid? Hey I know I get accused of not thinking before I speak all the time, but this isn’t our entry into the county fair where the worst that can happen is a last place finish.”
“Honey, what’s wrong with your car?” Mary asked him.
Josh took an extra squishy bite of his sandwich, and sticky oatmeal plopped to the floor. I would imagine this was a stalling technique. I’d employed that method many times myself with varying degrees of results. He gulped down his bite. “Sometimes this wheel gets stuck,” he said, looking up at my eyes and then his mother’s.
“How often does it get stuck?” I asked.
“More than it used to.”
Not much of an answer, I thought as I ran my hands through my hair in the traditional “I’m screwed” way.
“Mike, you can’t still be thinking of doing this?” Gary asked, rising up from the couch.
“I don’t have a good feeling about BT, Gary. I can’t explain it, but I really think he needs my help.”
Gary looked at me funny. “BT needs your help?” He finally came out, asking the obvious question. “Are you sure this isn’t just your over-active imagination or your senseless need to put yourself in danger or is it just a way to commit suicide by zombie?!” Gary said heatedly.
“Well, don’t hold back, brother! Tell me what you’re really thinking.”
“You’re upsetting him!” Mary came to Gary’s defense.
I didn’t see it that way, looked way more like he was doing the disturbing.
“Mike, ever since we left Maine, you have done everything in your power to put us in as much danger as possible. It seems like you go out of your way to find the worst situation, then you head right for it, like you just can’t wait to see a new and unusual way to die.”
“I don’t remember forcing you to leave Maine, Gary,” I said forcefully.
“Someone had to watch your back,” he said, advancing a step on me.
“You do realize, Gary, that we are in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, right? And that we are no longer on the top of the food chain. Going out for smokes can now be a life or death situation.”
“You know I don’t smoke and neither do you, but you’d probably pick up the habit just to see if you could get them.”
Gary was pretty worked up. I hadn’t seen him this angry since they cancelled Battle of the Network Stars sometime back in the late seventies. “Gary, I’m not doing this out of some ill-conceived way to commit suicide. My family, my friends are in trouble, I could never, I would never leave them, or their fates up to the whim of a crazy bitch vampire.”
“No swearing in my house,” Mary said loudly. Then she stopped to look at me when she processed the rest of the sentence. “Crazy bitch vampire?”
“Mom, no swearing,” Josh echoed his mother in a much-practiced routine.
“Like Dracula vampires?” Mary asked hesitantly.
“What? He’s not joking?” Mary asked as she sat down heavily, nearly missing the edge of the couch. Gary caught her under her armpit to keep her from hitting the ground.
“Her name’s Eliza and she’s got this thing for Mike,” Gary said as Mary settled deeper into the couch, trying to hide herself from the advancing shadows in her mind.
“And you came into my house!” Mary shouted, rising quickly from her perch. “How dare you!” she said, shaking with rage.
“You opened the door to us,” I told her.
“I wouldn’t have; had I known!” she shouted.
“I’m sorry. I really didn’t have the time to give you our bio when we were trying to save our lives,” I told her.
“Cool, you know a vampire?” Josh asked, surprised.
“It’s not nearly as cool as you might think,” I told him.
“Does she sparkle?” he asked.
“Why would she sparkle?” I asked Josh. I was clearly confused.
“You wouldn’t understand the reference,” Gary interjected, with no further explanation.
“Can we forget about all this sparkly shit!” Mary shouted.
“Mom!” Josh yelled.
“Sorry, Josh. Mommy’s a little stressed-out right now. Where is this vampire now?” Mary asked, swinging back and forth between Gary and myself, searching for a truthful answer.
“Well, I mean she could be anywhere by now,” Gary said.
“Where was she the last time you saw her?” Mary asked, trying to extract the information like a stubborn, impacted tooth.
“Well, what’s your definition of ‘saw’?” I asked her, trying to get the heat off Gary.
“I swear, I’ll throw you both out right now if I don’t get a straight answer!”
“What about my head wound?” Gary asked with alarm.
“Oh for Christ’s sakes! I’ve cut myself worse shaving my legs!” Mary shouted.
“Eww gross, Mom! Why would you shave your legs?” Josh asked, clearly turning the shade of green I had when I saw him eating his sandwich earlier.
“I’ll bet your legs don’t bleed as much as my head,” Gary said as he absently touched his wound.
“I’ll ask you one more time, Mike, and then you and your brother will be hitting the streets,” Mary said seriously. “Whether or not you ‘saw’ (in finger quotes) this Eliza, where was her last known spot?”
“I-95,” I told her.
“I-95 goes up the entire eastern coast. Could you please be a little more specific?” Mary said, heading towards the front door.
“Well, if you were to open that door you’re heading for and look across the street, past the small copse of woods, you would basically run into her last known whereabouts,” I told her.
I could tell that opening the door had suddenly lost some of its luster. Zombies were a nightmare, which many people had not been able to wrap their minds around and had paid the ultimate price for that disconnect. Vampires, well basically the same path, but you had to go a lot deeper into the woods, so to speak.
“Did Mike tell you he was a half-vamp?” Gary said, still fingering the bandages.
“What?” Mary said, almost falling over herself to get away from me.
“You’re not helping, Gary. How hard did that bullet hit?”
“Way cool!” Josh said, coming to get a better look at the circus attraction.
“Stay away from him!” Mary shouted, but I didn’t know if she was talking to him or me.
“Do you drink blood?” Josh asked excitedly. He may have heeded his mother’s words and stopped his advance, but his curiosity was unbridled.
“No, but I’ve got this thing for Pop-Tarts now,” I told him honestly.
“He has a psychic link to Eliza,” Gary added absently.
I thought Mary was going to faint. “Gary, feel free to shut the hell up whenever you want,” I told him.
“What? She has a right to know.”
“Does your friend out there turn into like Big Foot or something?” Josh asked. “I mean because I saw him running down the street and he was HUGE!” Josh said, spreading his hands as far apart as he could.
“No, but that would be cool,” I told Josh.
“Yeah, it really would be,” he agreed, nodding as he answered.
“Does she know you’re here?” Mary asked cautiously. She kept eyeing the door anxiously as if she expected her to bust through at any moment.
“No,” I answered.
“How can you be so sure?” Mary asked.
“Things would be way worse,” Gary said. “I really only have a scratch?” he asked her.
“Oh, honey,” Mary said reverting back to her caregiver status. “But it really is a nasty looking scratch.”
I don’t know if she was a trooper and had assimilated the information and was dealing with it or she just chose to push it down deeper into her psyche. Not my call, but whatever gets you through the day can’t be all bad.
“Can we still go on with the plan?” I asked Mary. She seemed to have lost herself in Gary’s wound. “I’ll take that as a yes,” I said to Josh.
“I would,” he agreed with me.
“You think it’s better to drag this behind rather than tie it to the top?” I asked Josh for maybe the third time.
“Even for an adult, you don’t listen well,” he admonished me. “I’ll tell you once again, this car has no top or bottom to tie anything onto. If it were to flip, it would get stuck on the clothes, like a turtle.”
“That makes sense,” I told him.
“That’s what you said the first two times I told you,” he said.
“Hey, cut me some slack, kid, I’m the one running with the zombies. I’m a little nervous.”
“I guess I would be too,” he answered, thinking about it.
“Gary, I know you’re head is probably still aching, and you might be woozy and everything, but do you think you could lay down some covering fire if I were to say, trip over something?”
Gary was fighting back a comment. I could see the machinations behind his eyes working frantically, but apparently higher reasoning or a higher purpose took over. “I don’t think this is a good idea, Mike, but I’ll always have your back,” he said, getting up, even with Mary’s disapproving stare.
I nodded my thanks to him. I stuffed Gary’s bandages and bloody shirt into a laundry bag, secured the top and then tied a nylon rope from the neck of the bag to a strut on Josh’s car.
I opened a window and immediately regretted my decision. The smell that assailed us was hideous, the sour stench of death. Josh hurled his peanut butter and oatmeal sandwich. It looked pretty much the same coming up as it had going down. I would not be adding that to my list of foods to try.
“You going to be alright?” I asked him as I lowered the car by the laundry bag rope to the ground.
I could hear Gary gagging in the background; Josh started back up. “Great,” I muttered, “dueling gaggers.” My support system was not looking up to task.
Mary saved the day. “You two are going to ruin my carpet!” she yelled, getting up to clean Josh’s internal spillings.
A zombie startled the crap out of me as he smacked into the bars. It had come dangerously close to stepping on the car. More zombies were coming to investigate the din and they weren’t generally too concerned with foot placement.
“Josh, you have to get that car out of here, or they’re gonna bust it,” I said. That seemed to get him. The smell was one thing, but losing one of his remote-controlled cars was another.
The zombie was eyeing us hungrily (pun intended). It was tough to say if intelligence burned behind its opaque eyes, but this was no clodhopping brain chaser either. Josh gulped loudly as he looked straight at the zombie.
“Umm, I have to get closer to the window so I can see the car,” Josh told me as he turned his large remote on.
“Cover your ears,” I told him.<
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Mary was coming back from the kitchen with her cleaning supplies. “Don’t you dare!” she screamed just as the report from my rifle rang out.
“COOL!” Josh yelled, taking his hands away from around his ears.
The zombie had fallen mostly straight back, but its left arm was resting on top of the car.
“No shooting in the house!” Mary yelled.
“I’ll keep that in mind, the next time,” I told her honestly. Zombies were within a couple of feet of the window. “Josh, now or never, buddy.”
I’ll give him credit. He mustered up all his courage and stepped up to the window. And then nothing, I saw him moving buttons back and forth and side to side and we could hear the car trying to do something, but the zombie had it pinned.
“I think I can get it free,” Josh said excitedly, up until the point a zombie woman cracked it in half. Josh looked more crushed than the car that was now getting ground into the dirt.
I quickly undid the knot on the small laundry bag and shut the window, drawing the shades and pulling the curtains shut.
“Well, that didn’t work,” I said, going into the kitchen, I sat down heavily in a chair.
“Josh, honey, are you alright?” Mary said, putting her cleaning supplies down to grab her son in a bear hug.
Josh wept a little, but he tried his best to hide it from us all.
“It was a gift from his father,” Mary said over his head to me.
I can’t even begin to convey how big of an ass I felt at this point. If you’ve read all of my journals, you know I have a penchant for saying or doing the wrong thing at the ultimate wrong time, but this one? This one took the cake.
“What…what am I going to do if…if Da…Dad comes home with the parts for it now?” Josh sobbed into his mother’s arms.
“Josh, he’d understand. You were trying to do something good for someone else; you guys would rebuild it, that’s all, honey,” Mary said. She seemed to have correctly punched all the right buttons. Josh pulled back from her arms, wiping his tears away.
“I’ve got another car, Mr. Talbot, if you want to try again, that is,” he said to me.