The two men had made it to the bottom of the slope without falling again and now they made their way across the grassy floor of the gully, heading right for the boys. Hunt nudged Wooly with an elbow, tilted the screen of his phone toward him. Wooly narrowed his eyes and bent over to read Troy’s text, then put both hands out and took the phone from him, held it closer to read again, his face scrunched up in puzzlement. Handing the phone back to Hunt, he mouthed, “What the fuck?”
Hunt shrugged and frowned in return.
The five of them continued to watch as the men still stumbled their way, Hunt and Wooly exchanging wary glances.
Finally Wooly cleared his throat and asked, “What if they’re sick?”
Without looking behind, Craig said, “What does that mean?”
Hunt said, “What if they’re not drunk . . . what if there’s something wrong with them?”
Steve looked back at him, brow humped low, catching a meaning then looking around Craig to catch JoJo’s eye.
“Wrong like what?” Craig asked.
Hunt said, “Like, maybe a flu or something. You know how you said town was quiet . . .” He could see that JoJo and Steve might be on board; they’d earlier expressed their concern, but their older friend dismissed them.
Craig said, “My sister had to drop out of school for a year because of him. My dad sent her away to a school on the mainland. This guy stays on the island. He gets to stay here?”
Hunt asked, “He lost his job?” The men were closer, the pale features of their faces coming into focus.
“Yeah, now he plays dress-up for the tourists and drinks. They took his—”
“Can I show you something my brother sent?”
“What . . .?” Craig said, looking over his shoulder, eyes turned down.
Hunt handed him the phone and Craig read the text.
Craig said, “What does this mean?” handing the phone back.
Steve held out his hand and said, “Can I see?” Hunt passed the phone to him.
Craig shouted out, “What do you want, Ambrose?” back arched, chest puffed out, arms still crossed.
Steve said to Craig, “You read this?”
Craig said to Hunt, “Your brother sounds like a goof.”
Wooly said, “His brother’s the total opposite of a goof.”
“What—you have a crush on him?”
Hunt put his hand out for his phone, but Steve handed it to JoJo, whose eyes were wide now. JoJo took it, head scanning left to right as he read.
“My brother’s nineteen, he, like . . . he sent that as a group text where my mom would read it, Dad, too . . . and my sisters . . .? He wouldn’t do that; wouldn’t think it was funny. And to my Dad . . .?—after this last year? It’s not a joke.”
Craig said, “So, what? These guys are going to bite us? Get real.”
“We should go,” Hunt said to Wooly.
Craig snorted, said, “Go. Who’s keeping you?”
Hunt grabbed the inside of Wooly’s arm and turned him, walking away. Wooly remained.
“Just hold on,” Wooly said, “let’s . . . let’s see what they want . . .”
“Troy said for us all to meet at the hotel.”
“We will. I just . . . I just want to see.”
Hunt said, “You think . . . think they’ll bite?”
“I want to see,” Wooly said, anxiousness making his voice breathy.
“We’re going now,” he told Wooly, walking around behind him and circling to stand next to JoJo. He asked him, “Can I get my phone?”
JoJo said, “Sure,” then slipped it into the front pocket of his jeans.
“Come on, man, don’t. Just give me my phone.”
Craig smiled, said, “Hey, go push them over, we’ll give your phone back.”
“Fuck off,” he said, his voice high and tinged with panic, “just give me my fucking phone.”
“Afraid they’ll bite you?” JoJo laughed.
“You’re the one who was freaked out first. Just give me my phone, please,” he said, holding his hand out politely.
“Go on, just go do it. It’s funny. They’re either drunk or—”
“I’m not doing it. Just give me my goddamn phone,” Hunt said firmly, glowering at the side of JoJo’s head.
Craig said, “You want your phone back, but you won’t push ‘em?—I’ll trade you. Want your phone?—bring me that hat off Ambrose’s head . . .”
10
Troy
Inside Brit’s garage, Troy found a small paint-splattered AM/FM radio that looked like it came free with a magazine subscription. There were other things as well, a sledgehammer that could have proved useful—but he preferred the axe; he also bypassed a hammer, figuring Brit had seemed comfortable with her bike lock, anyway. Other items caught his eye, too, but he was already taking too long as it was—and would they really need bike helmets, or welding visors, a blowtorch, turpentine, or various other protective pieces of equipment or dangerous chemicals if their only mission was to get to the hotel? Sure, if they were holed up here, had to defend the home or something…
On the way out of the dim garage and into the bright sunlight, he popped the battery cover off the back of the suspiciously light radio and discovered, of course, that it had no power.
“Fucking typical,” he sighed, and tossed it aside into the grass. When his eyes came up, he froze at the sight of someone walking his way.
While surprise gripped him, his brain struggled to release the sudden seizing of his limbs—the approaching figure was a teenage girl, glossy black hair pulled back from her face and tied in a swinging ponytail, too lively to be undead. Just the same, his heart pounded, his fingers tingled, and his scalp crawled as if stretched too tight.
The girl walked toward him, bypassing the front door and coming around the side of the house to the kitchen steps, eyes lowered and watching the screen of her phone. A thin, white cord hung from the phone in a gently swinging U, earbuds poked in her ears.
He was instantly self-aware—in a moment she would look up and see a disheveled young dude with an axe coming out of her garage and heading to the same door…
…Before his joints came unlocked, and he could gesture with a friendly wave, her eyes darted up and he instantly recognized a bolt of fear that shot her eyes wide open and stumbled her step. She flinched, her mouth fell open, and she jumped back and to her right, her shoulder bumping the wall.
Behind her, now that she darted aside, he saw she wasn’t alone. Coming in the gap in the cedar hedge that led from the street was another young woman; this one with dead, dull gray eyes.
But the first girl—who had to be Brit’s sister—broke the silent, shocking moment with a high and piercing scream. Now it was his turn to flinch and step back, and he did it gripping the axe with both hands, drawing the blade up as high as his shoulder.
She mistook it for aggression, dropped her phone, her mouth forming words—at least not screaming anymore—and her body made stiff, jerky movements as she clung to the wall while her legs still tried to take her toward the kitchen door.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, unable to hide the rising tension in his voice.
He took a step along the path, narrowing the distance between them, staying to the right side to appear less threatening, and headed toward the girl who’d just entered the yard, intending to get behind her, hoping she wouldn’t turn and run into the thing that had followed her into the yard while her headphones were on.
“Go, go in the kitchen. I’m with your sister, go up the steps she’s in there.”
And saying that simple, hopefully comforting phrase, he saw further fear that would provoke her, his words now making this poor young teenager think that maybe he’d already killed her sister and was suggesting she should go find the dead body in the kitchen.
She froze, plastered to the white clapboard, hands clutching her phone to her chest, one earbud still stuck in her ear, the other dangling. Her knees shook.
&nb
sp; The kitchen door rattled and banged, Brit trying to open it, forgetting it was locked, panicking, knowing he was talking to someone and hoping that it was her sister.
“Go!” he said again, taking a hand off the axe to wave her toward the door.
The girl had heard the sound of the aluminum banging in its aluminum frame and darted a look up the steps in time to see Brit stumbling out onto the small square concrete stoop, her face furrowed with worry.
“Beck?—Beck, where were you?” Brit cried.
“I went to the lake,” her sister said in a practically identical and crying voice, even mimicking the desperate tone.
Troy moved past them, walking the grass next to the concrete patio stones Beck had followed. The young undead woman who’d followed Brit’s sister into the yard continued her approach, blank eyes locked on him now. The two girls, apparently not noting the intruder, kept talking, Beck saying, “What’s happening? Who’s he?”
Brit said, “You left Dad?”
“I walked down to the lake—I was gone ten minutes.”
“Beck, his bedpan was full.”
“I was gone ten minutes,” Beck pleaded.
With maybe thirty feet between him and the zombie, he turned to see the two sisters embracing on the stairs. Beck sprawled up the steps, feet on the flagstones, Brit on the top step clutching Beck, her two tanned knees pointing up on either side of her clinging sister. Both of them watched him now.
In an effort to keep things calm, he urged Brit: “Maybe take her inside,” nudging his head toward the approaching woman. Where the two sisters were on the steps, they weren’t able to see the woman at first, but now they did, only Brit realizing the danger.
She said, “Oh, shit,” standing and trying to pull her reluctant sister up with her. “Beck, come inside with me.”
“What is going on? Is Dad okay?” Beck asked. “Who is that guy?” A whirlwind of queries for this poor girl who had no idea what was happening on the island.
“Just come in the kitchen with me,” Brit said, tugging Beck by the arms as he turned around to face the approaching woman. She was much closer now, a little more than a dozen feet.
Even to Beck, who hadn’t seen one yet, the woman’s appearance wasn’t right, and he heard her say, “Brit, what’s happening?” again, her voice rising with fear.
The zombie was only recently dead, and she looked otherwise unaltered, just milky eyes and a cheesy pallor to her skin that was oddly flat in direct sunshine. But, of course, she wouldn’t sweat despite the heat. Her hair was clean and well kept, pulled back and curled in a bun; she had to be no more than thirty. Physique was a little soft looking; still shapely, and her face was very pretty, verging on beautiful despite her ghastly snarling.
When Troy drew back the axe in preparation, twisting like a nervous sort of John Wockenfuss stance he’d picked up in Little League, the woman gnashed her teeth at him and they made plastic clicking sounds like a kid’s toy. She was hungry now and closing in on her prey.
Beck yelled Brit’s name and he heard them struggling behind him, their sneakers scuffling on concrete. She was watching a man about to knock a woman’s head off her shoulders for no discernible reason—though he was picturing the blade of the axe striking the woman’s pretty face just below her cheekbone, not decapitating her.
Brit yelled in a whispering shush, “Beck, Beck, Beck, calm, calm, come here, come with me,” but Beck responded in unintelligible whimpers.
His hips wiggled in the batting stance, soles of his feet squishing on the foam bed of his flip-flops as they shifted in the grass. The dead woman stretched her hands toward him, hooked in claws.
She was married, a wedding band and engagement ring winking in the sunlight.
He drew the axe back farther, his body gathering kinetic energy stored in his hips. Sunlight picked off something else: on her neck, a pendant, a name in gold, Julie, maybe.
Now she had a fucking name, and he took a step back, thinking he would still knock her head off, but maybe just in another few seconds.
“Careful, Troy,” Brit said behind him, seeing him step back. He glanced around, worried there was a garden hose snaking through the grass that he might trip over, then taking another step back as the zombie continued to lumber toward him. It scowled and hissed, the wet sounds it made hoarse and rasping, almost delicate, and it made him wonder if the woman had a nice speaking voice when she woke up this morning. Shit.
Now Brit urged him, “Do it, Troy, do it.”
“I will, Brit,” he said, wiggling the axe in preparation.
11
Hunt
Hunt went out in a wide circle, sidestepping and facing the two drunken revolutionary soldiers while Craig and Steve and JoJo laughed and backed their way to the cave’s mouth, Wooly going along with them but separate. And while Hunt sized them up, these two middle-aged drunks in costume, he formulated ways he could get out of this situation. Because he’d never actually push one of them over. Realistically, he could get in a lot of trouble for something like this. Get himself arrested by Canadian cops—and then they find the booze they’d swiped, too . . .? Give him a breathalyzer and find out he’s drunk, and then what? Picture Mom and Dad coming to a police station, maybe getting sent back to the U.S., ruining the vacation . . .
So he figured all he’d have to do is put on a good show and entertain their new friends enough to raise their spirits and liberate his phone from them. Grab a hat?—yeah, maybe he could do that. But, shit, depending on the way the story was told, a cop could consider that theft. And here he was back to thinking he could end up in jail somehow, ruining the whole vacation.
The idea that he would be responsible for such an enormous ruination scared the shit out of him. He would bear that weight until he left the house for college, he was sure of it.
Now he circled the two drunk guys, looking for an opportunity to win his spectators over. A chance to make them laugh, or call this stupid charade off.
And the thing was, once he got in position, hunkered down like a rodeo clown, both of them got their eyes on him and now were following him around dazedly. Stumbling toward him, lurching from side-to-side, and when he circled counterclockwise, he had them pivoting awkwardly to give chase. They really were coming after him.
Now the thought—as crazy as it was—that there could be truth in Troy’s message frightened him. I mean, Troy had to be kidding or something. . . . Or mistaken in some way. But what if he wasn’t? Up close like this, you couldn’t deny that there was a certain zombie-like quality to these two men’s behavior. Craig had said Ambrose was a drunk ever since some incident with his sister. What if he wasn’t drunk at all? . . .
The quickest and best way out of this situation wasn’t to turn tail and run, not to worry about Canadian cops and being detained on this side of the border, but just grab the hat and run. It came to him: Just grab it and go. Grab it, throw it at Craig, get his stupid phone, grab Wooly and try to find Troy or Dad.
The men were frightening up close. But at the same time, pathetic. That they were grown men and could reduce themselves to this stupor was sad. Unless it wasn’t drunkenness . . . But that was a thought he’d best avoid if he wanted to accomplish his task. Besides, the men had no rotting flesh nor held their arms aloft, hands in claws. Their eyes, however, were dull and vacant. So he avoided looking in them. Instead, his eyes roamed their costumes: ancient military gear; wool trousers in gray, black boots beaten and muddied, redcoats with white belts forming a cross over their chest. One of the men had lost his hat when he’d stumbled coming down the hill. The other still had his, but it sat crooked on his head. This would be Ambrose. Both men were in their fifties, but it was hard to get a read on what they were like because there was a certain lifelessness to their eyes. No sign of intelligence—which was weird for just being drunk.
Before he even realized what he was doing, he made a move toward the one called Ambrose, feigning like he would approach him, then darting back. And Ambrose,
in his stupor, fell for it, his lurch teetering forward, the man putting out his hands to grab at him, but getting nowhere close. And it was easier than he would’ve ever anticipated. He darted his left hand out, his pinky and ring finger snagging on the emblem on the front of Ambrose’s tall black costume hat, hooking it, pulling it right off the man’s head, the chinstrap coming forward, the hat falling into Hunt’s open-armed clutch.
“Well, hot shit,” he said, disbelieving how easy it had been. It wasn’t theft if he was going to give it back—that’s what he’d tell the cops. And what the hell? . . . These guys couldn’t tell the cops anything, they were so totally out of it.
But the act of pulling the hat forward while Ambrose was already headed that way had the drunkard pitching forward and falling into the dirt at Hunt’s feet. He jumped up and back, heard the uproarious cheering from his new gang.
He took two steps rearward, holding up the hat above his head in triumph. Then Ambrose’s companion tripped right over Ambrose’s legs, pitched forward and fell down at his side, teeth clacking as his chin whacked the dirt.
The uproarious cheering became peals of uncontrollable cackling, all the young onlookers absolutely losing their minds. And he couldn’t deny that it was funny. Two grown men who’d pushed themselves way past the point of reasonable inebriation, making absolute asses of themselves.
“Thanks for the hat, Ambrose,” he said—all for Craig’s benefit, all to get his fucking phone back—then turned to deliver his bounty to Craig, but the guys were all trotting up to join him.
Wooly said, “You fucking-A did it—I totally thought you were going to chicken out . . .”
JoJo was laughing, running past them, giving him a good-natured punch in the arm before hunkering down with hands on knees over the guy who’d tripped across Ambrose’s legs. “They are so out of it,” he said.
Craig took the hat from him, walked past saying, “Hey, Ambrose,” tucking the hat under his arm. “Hey, you piece of shit . . .” He rested the heel of his sneaker on Ambrose’s shoulder like a conqueror. Ambrose struggled to rise.
The Walker Family Vacation (Episode 3) Page 4