by Mark Tufo
Nicole ducked. “Definitely not by pointing it at me.”
“Oh yeah, sorry,” Tracy answered sheepishly.
“Are you sure this is such a good idea, Mom?”
“My boys are out there. I’m going to find them.”
Nicole sighed and walked over to her mother to grab the rifle out of the safe. She proceeded to pretend to know how to load it as she placed it on the bed. Nicole spent the next few anxious minutes under the watchful eye of her mother looking for the nonexistent magazine well, not knowing that .22 rifles are sometimes barrel fed. Not wanting to appear ignorant, Nicole picked the weapon back up. “All loaded,” she announced proudly. It wasn’t.
“I didn’t see you put any bullets in it,” Tracy said, but she honestly had no clue. “What about this?” Tracy asked handing over the pistol.
Nicole had watched her boyfriend and her father shoot at least half a dozen times, and they always pulled back on something on the top. So when she finally found the mechanism on the pistol that pulled back and then slammed home when her grip faltered, she proudly announced the pistol was also loaded. It wasn’t. At this point, Nicole didn’t think they were headed out the gate and was hoping that her armory skills wouldn’t be put to the test.
“Mom, we have no idea where they went and they have at least a fifteen minute head start,” Nicole began pleading. Her mother might be stressed out to the max but Nicole was to put it bluntly, scared shitless.
At 4’11” and maybe ninety pounds after a Thanksgiving dinner, Nicole’s biggest defense had been a Marine dad that some thought might be unstable. Nicole had tortured many a potential threatening people with the words, ‘My dad knows where you live.’ (For some reason Mike could not fathom, all of Nicole’s friends and potential enemies were deathly afraid of him, and he had not so much as said ‘boo’ to any of them.) This had all been a device of Nicole. She had made sure that everyone knew of a particular incident in Canada involving her father, several Mounties, and a politician. Nicole couldn’t have been any safer if everyone thought her father was Tony Soprano. When her brothers had gotten older, they became a second layer of defense, and to top that off was Brendon. If all else failed, she had a mouth that belied her diminutive size. To hear her scream, one would think they were being besieged by a platoon of howler monkeys. Her dad, who had multiple drill instructors scream at him and shrug it off, shied away from his daughter when her ever-widening pie hole began to vibrate. But shorn of her bodyguards and with an impotent voice—zombies wouldn’t care about screams, it would be more like the sound of a dinner bell to them—she would become what she truly was, Daddy’s little princess. Strip away the abrasiveness of her attitude and there was just a scared young woman.
“I could use some cigarettes, too,” her mother announced.
“Let’s go,” Nicole agreed immediately. Addiction is a powerful motivator. Screw the zombies.
Henry looked up from his chair, watching the two women leave. He realized nobody was there and hoped that somebody would be home soon to put out his second breakfast.
Tracy and Nicole walked out to the garage. It was when they entered that Nicole noticed the obvious. (Yes, you guessed it, Princess Obvious.)
“You’re going to take Dad’s car?” she asked tremulously.
“Well he did trash my car,” Tracy answered, but not with much verve.
A few months back, Mike and Tracy had been at the grocery store picking out some Starbucks coffee. Mike was in heaven smelling the wonderful aromas of the different beans and spices.
“You know,” he began, “If God told me I had to give up either beer or coffee, I honestly don’t know what I’d do.”
Tracy had thought the dilemma was easily solved. “Beer.”
Mike looked at her. “All right then, God says coffee or cigarettes.”
Tracy now saw the point.
After they had filled up the backseat of Mike’s Jeep and were heading out of the parking lot, Tracy had asked him, “If God said this Jeep or me, how hard of a decision would that be for you.
Mike’s answer came swiftly. “Oh, Hon, that wouldn’t be hard.” But he hadn’t elaborated and she more than half-believed his non-verbalized implication.
“Any better ideas?” Tracy asked.
“Well, we do need cigarettes,” Nicole smiled sickly. More than once in her rebellious youth she had wanted to ‘borrow’ her father’s Jeep when she had snuck out of the house, but she was unruly, not insane. The Jeep had stayed safely tucked away in the garage.
Nicole cautiously climbed up into the passenger seat, half expecting some form of theft deterrent to activate. No matter how much she adjusted the seat and her posture she could not get comfortable; guilt was a difficult suit to wear. Her mother didn’t seem to be wearing it any better than her. The Jeep started loudly in the confined space. If not for the seat belts strapped across their laps, they both might have jumped out. Tracy slowly placed the car in reverse.
“Um, Mom, you might want to open the garage door.”
“Oh yeah, right,” Tracy smiled weakly.
This expedition was getting off to a memorable start, cigarettes or no. Nicole wasn’t sure about the wisdom of this crusade. The door rumbled open, Tracy jerkily popped the clutch, stalling the Jeep. “Oops,”she commented.
“Great,” Nicole muttered under her breath. The next three attempts at reverse didn’t go much better. Then there was first gear to contend with.
Tracy rolled up to the main gate, hopeful they would open it before she lost momentum and had to mess with first gear again.
Igor waved them to a halt.
“Dammit,” Tracy and Nicole muttered at the same time and both for the same reason. Nicole had nearly got her nose broken on the dashboard as the Jeep bucked like a pissed off bronco.
“Vat’s a matter vit you Talbots? You not like it here?” Igor asked.
“Igor, do you know where the boys went?” Tracy asked concernedly.
“They say to help their Da, but I could tell they was full of it,” he answered helpfully.
She wanted to yell at him for letting them go, but his job was who to let in, not out.
“They be all right, Missus Talbot, they were armed for bear,” he finished when he saw the look of apprehension on her face. “You two should stay here and wait for them to return. It’s too dangerous to go out there.”
“Did you give the boys the same speech?” Tracy lashed back.
Igor stepped back and motioned for the bus to move. He’d learned a lot of things since he had moved to the States. Women were not subservient like in Russia, and it was best not to stir a hornet’s nest with a short stick. “Have a nice day.” And he walked back towards the bus to get some heat.
Tracy stalled the Jeep twice more at the mouth of the gate. The bus driver seemed on the verge of panic. He was gesturing wildly for Tracy to get out of the entrance.
“What the hell is he so worried about?” Tracy asked hotly, driving, or actually stalling Mike’s Jeep was getting her flustered. “There isn’t a zombie for miles!” She was wrong—very, very wrong—but they were definitely out of the line of sight. “Keep your damn shorts on!” Tracy yelled as she successfully ground through first and out of the way of the bus. “God, Mike always makes it look so easy.”
“Mom, are you sure we should be out here?” Nicole couldn’t put her finger on it. but something didn’t seem right. Her foreboding grew as Little Turtle diminished in the rearview mirror.
Tracy was too busy concentrating on shifting gears to notice anything. It was possible her difficulties with the clutch were stemming more from her subconscious than her foot to pedal interaction. “Huh, got it!” Tracy said triumphantly as she pulled away from the intersection of Havana and Evans with nary a rattle. Now, as she surveyed her surroundings in earnest, she had to agree with Nicole. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. She had endangered her daughter and herself and for what, she hadn’t a clue which way her boys had gone. Driving
around without a purpose was tantamount to suicide. Sure, they were armed, but neither one of them had shot more than a half dozen bullets, and none of those rounds had impacted the desired targets.
Tracy felt exhausted from the stress of this brave new world, her husband gallivanting all over the place and now her boys were God knows where.
Tracy’s head slumped over the steering wheel as she looked over at her daughter. “Nicole, I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going. Mike will kill us if he finds out about this and not only because we took his Jeep.”
Nicole had never seen her mom so defeated. She had to think of something fast or her mother might just shutdown completely. Nicole had lost her license to drive last year. Not that any patrolman would be stopping to check, but the fact remained that she could barely control an automatic transmission. A clutch was out of the question. The sense of foreboding that she was feeling had not diminished in the least. She had no wish to walk back to the complex.
“I sure could use a smoke,” Nicole said, looking out the corner of her eye, hoping for some reaction besides despair from her mother.
Tracy picked her head up, anguish clearly visible on her taut features. There was also something else…resolve. She was a little bit more than pissed at herself that she should be able to pull out of her funk over a cigarette, but old habits don’t die easily. They can be suppressed or even forgotten for a while but they can and will always rear their ugly heads at the most inopportune times. This, however, was an opportune time. Tracy wasn’t sure if she was mad or grateful that Nicole knew which buttons to push with such precise precision, but after all, she had been practicing for the last eleven years.
Tracy put the truck in gear. “Sounds good to me. Contracting lung cancer is the least of my problems.”
Nicole would have laughed if the thought wasn’t so macabre. Somehow, at this point, lung cancer was the safer alternative. How the hell did that happen? They drove in silence for only a minute or so as Tracy pulled into the nearest service station a half-mile away. There were a couple of cars in the bays, but they were unattended. Tracy did a lazy figure eight through the parking lot looking for anything that might make this visit not worth their while. Besides spilled gas, there were no imminent threats. The lights inside the convenience store were out and the opaque glass masked everything. Tracy parked in front of the store, the Jeep idling quietly. She and Nicole peered intently into the gloom looking for any movement.
“Keep the car running. I’ll run in and grab a bunch of packs,” Nicole said as she began to open the door.
“Wait a minute, I’m not letting you go in there!” Tracy yelled louder than she meant to.
“Mom, I’ll be fine, I’m just gonna run in and run out.”
“No, if anyone should go in, it should be me. I’ve already got two kids off God knows where. You stay here and I’ll run in,” Tracy said, convinced this was the correct maneuver. “If anything happens to me, you just take off,” she said as she began to open her door.
“Mom!” Nicole yelled.
Tracy slammed her door shut convinced Nicole had seen something. She looked wildly around for the threat.
“Mom, I can’t drive a stick. If something happens to you, I’ll have to run. Have you seen me run?”
“Shit, you scared me,” Tracy said. As Nicole’s words settled in, she realized the dilemma they were in. No matter which approach she took, she would be placing her daughter in danger.
“Let’s go in together,” Nicole interjected before the paralysis of fear took her mother over again.
Nicotine was a powerful drug. It had the power to overwhelm judgment. Tracy nodded weakly. They both opened their doors and stepped out. The cold air was redolent with the scent of spilled gasoline. The noxious fumes made breathing difficult but also had the benefit (or disadvantage) of masking the scent of death. They hurried to the entrance to get away from the overpoweringly strong smell. Had their sense of smell not been burned-out by the gas it would have been assaulted by the now all-too-familiar stink of death. It would be three breaths too late before they realized their error.
“God, I wish there were some lights on,” Nicole said, a slight tremor in her voice.
Tracy had been first in and was silently glad that was the case. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom inside the store, she could make out a pair of scrubs-clad legs sticking out from behind the counter. Those legs were not made for walking anymore. There was also a congealed pool of blood coming from the aisle closest to them. Tracy had no need whatsoever to see what had caused it. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. She shot her hand out and grabbed Nicole’s arm, steering her away from the offending aisle.
“Shhh…did you hear that?” Tracy stopped and listened intently.
Panic welled in them both and Nicole hadn’t even heard a sound. They both stood stock-still as the seconds ticked by. Nicole’s arm began to throb where her mother gripped it like a vise.
“Mom, let go,” Nicole said in hushed tones. “There’s nothing here.”
A small scratching sound emanated from behind the cold drinks.
“It’s probably just the refrigerator kicking on,” Nicole said, more to convince herself than anything.
Tracy pointed to the un-lit lights overhead.
Nicole looked up and swallowed hard. “Yup, no power. I knew that.”
“Shhh…” Tracy more motioned than vocalized.
Nicole was not one to let a word go unspoken and was about to ask another question when the sound repeated itself. It was rhythmic and faint. There was no menace implied from the sound. All the same, Tracy was in no mood to hang around.
Tracy spun to face her daughter. “Let’s just grab a bunch of smokes and some sodas for the boys and get the hell out of here.”
“I’m with you on that, this place gives me the creeps and it’s starting to smell worse than outside. Mom, any particular brand you want me to get?”
“Yeah, all you can carry. I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a long time before Winston-Salem starts pumping more of these out, unless they start to market a brand for zombies. ‘Hey, you’re already dead, why not smoke?’ she tried for a feeble joke.
“That’s funny in a sick way,” Nicole said with a stiff smile.
“Even if we don’t smoke them, we’ll be able to trade with them. In a couple of days they might as well be sticks of gold.”
Nicole’s eyes sparkled. “Gold? Huh.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Nicole said as she went over and grabbed one of the two half-sized shopping carts.
“Good call,” Tracy said as she grabbed the lone remaining cart.
Both women were so busy ‘shopping’ that neither noticed when the door to the freezer section opened. In the shadows a lone figure stared out at them lustfully.
The image of meat, not the actual word, crossed what rudimentary intelligence the beast possessed. Forward it moved, always forward, always hungry, always in pursuit of its next meal. Life was easy, it would have thought if it had enough cognitive power to be self-aware. That was not the case, though.
Nicole had finished filling her cart and had gone out to the Jeep to fill it with her first load of booty. She couldn’t have been any happier if she had just found Davy Jones’ locker. Her previous dread was long forgotten as she reentered the store. She stopped in her tracks, her smile frozen on her face as she watched in horror. An undead nightmare stalked her unwitting mother.
“Mom!” Nicole shrieked.
Tracy dropped the case of Pepsi. Cans shot out in all directions. As they ruptured, sticky liquid arced through the air. Tracy was about to yell at her daughter for scaring her, but when she looked up and saw the sheer terror on her daughter’s face, she knew something was terribly wrong.
Nicole was pointing wildly, her finger thrusting like a woodpecker. Words stuttered in her mouth. “Z-Z-Z…”
Tracy got the point. There weren’t too man
y words that started with ‘z’ that could instill so much panic, unless of course a murderous zebra was loose in Denver and she was in the way of some succulent wild grass. Tracy spun around to face the threat. Her foot slipped on the newly-spilled Pepsi. Her left leg shot out wildly as she plummeted to the ground. The expression on the zombie’s face changed from happiness to confusion as it wondered where its meal had gone. It was a beat or two before its eyes tracked down and locked back on its prey.
Tracy had landed hard on her ass; the fall had not been broken in the least by the tiled floor. Tracy began to backpedal as the zombie once again began its forward progress. Nicole couldn’t get it out of her head that she wasn’t watching a scary movie on cable; her mind was searching for an escape.
Tracy had pushed back as far as she could, her back colliding with the fridge doors. Her feet sought a purchase that still eluded her on the slick floor. Tracy looked up at her one-shoed pursuer. Shapely legs gave way to a slender waistline and then to what could only be described as porn star breasts. Tracy could barely see around that mounding cleavage to the face mostly hidden beyond. What Tracy saw pissed her off to know end.
“Allison?” Tracy asked indignantly.
Allison-thing slowed her pursuit, not stopping, but definitely slowing, as if walking and processing this question were using up most of her operating system.
“Allison Pittman?” Tracy asked again.
The slender face that stared back at her looked confused. The long auburn hair that framed the green eyes was a little bedraggled, but for the most part, this might be the best looking zombie in the history of the genre, Tracy mused. “I would have hoped that your face got eaten, bitch!” Tracy yelled, as she was finally able to get her feet back under her with the help of the door handle behind her.
“Mom! What’s going on?” Nicole moaned.
The Allison-thing had stopped, almost as if she had had a fatal operating error.
“This thing,” Tracy yelled, “is the bitch that almost split up my marriage!” She glared venomously at the curvaceous corpse.