by Mark Tufo
I could have driven my fist straight through that unfortunate bastard and not touched any human material. That was not a bullet designed for mere flesh to catch. Winters got another round off before the two remaining started spreading their suppressive fire around. The second man that Winters hit had been in the midst of diving for cover, and in a series of disastrous circumstances, ducked right into the path of the oncoming projectile. The devastation was immediate and profound. Let me see if I can paint the scene right. So, you take some random bad guy’s head, you neatly remove it from his body, you puree the thing in an industrial food processor. When it is nothing more than a heavy concentration of reddish gray pulp, you pour the contents into a large spray bottle. When you’re ready, pull the pump repeatedly and watch as the contents mist all over everything you are pointing it at, almost like an anti-Windex. That’s what I saw when the bullet pulverized that man. My guess was his soul was still wandering around trying to figure out why he couldn’t fire a gun anymore and why no one was paying him any attention because there was no way he knew he was dead. The transition had been too sudden and traumatic.
Two to our left, one to our right. Winters had caught the group unawares, but now that they knew where he was, he was actually in a pretty bad spot, mostly wide open. I didn’t think the hydrangea bush he was behind was going to stop much. Only one man was firing at him; I’m thinking the other guys had seen what a fifty cal could do and were having none of it. The one still in the battle was lining up on Winters, more or less forgetting about BT and myself. I stood up to get a better shot–nearly cost me my life as he turned and sprayed a half dozen rounds my way. Want to know what saved me? The size of his magazine. He ran out of rounds an inch or two from riddling me. I took that as a personal affront and put four or five rounds into him. He stutter-stepped backward; his rifle fell from his hands a moment before he himself toppled over.
“I surrender! I surrender!” the fourth man said. That was all great and fine, but we still had at least one off to our right.
“Stand up!” I shouted, “And if I see a gun, I will kill you!”
He did as I said, his hands high up in the air. BT stood as well. “Interlock your fingers and place them over your head!” he shouted. I had turned to make sure we weren’t blindsided by the other guy. Winters was now up, and had the Barrett pointed at our prisoner; looked somewhat like he had a Howitzer. Could have driven a fucking VW down that barrel.
“I’ve got zip ties,” Winters said. “You cover him, I’ll get him handcuffed.”
“I’ve got you,” BT responded.
“Be right back,” I told BT.
“Just wait a minute.” BT looked over his shoulder.
“I saw movement.”
“Even more of a reason,” he replied, although I was already moving away. I took note of the two men that would be lying right where they were until they became one with the earth again, but it was the blood of the one missing that had me transfixed. The part of me I did my best to ignore was completely enraptured with the fluid that was pouring from the wounded man, there was enough of it that I wondered how he had even managed to move. He was leaving a thick trail of blood globs, and I was following it like a fat kid might a luring route of gummy bears. The man was no more than fifty feet ahead of me. He was hunched over, one hand on a tree for support and the other, I would imagine, was attempting to stem the tide that had sprung forth from him. He half turned when he heard me approach.
“Please,” he groaned. He didn’t have the strength to beg for his life or for me to finish him. I came up warily as he slumped to the ground. His eyes were locked on mine, I alternated between his gaze and the blood that issued from his splayed hand. I should have shot him and been done with it. I couldn’t. Ripping into his neck and feeding the monster inside of me was fast approaching the fore, if not for BT trampling through the woods to make sure I was alright I think I would have succumbed right there and then. The man’s eyes were glazed over and he was reflexively gasping for air as his body had not quite caught on that his mind had given it up.
“Mike?” BT said as he approached cautiously. I had not moved; almost didn’t hear his words. He shook my shoulder gently. He never said anything, but he knew I’d been having an internal struggle. “We’ve got a prisoner. Come on, let’s go.”
I turned to look at him and he stepped back.
“Your…your teeth, man–your eyes; get your shit together.”
I had to shake my head several times before I was able to shake the demons away.
“I’m, I’m good.” But I didn’t feel good. Like a man lost in the desert, I’d been shown a jug of water only to have it removed before I could bring the life-giving fluid to my lips. I was thirsty; oh, so fucking thirsty. I would regretfully come back to that moment for a few days before I was able to submerge it down with the other vile things that sometimes pass across my thoughts; those things that by my will, thankfully, never see the light of day.
7
Mike Journal Entry 7
If Knox was planning something else for us, it was in the long game. We got our prisoner, a one Barry Smintner. Sounded like someone that should be playing tennis at the country club with Mimzy, but he was as far from money as a monkey is driving a car. Let me take that back, with enough training and under the right circumstances, I’m pretty sure a monkey could drive a car.
“You killed me friends.” He glowered in the small room. We’d left the cul-de-sac and went a street over. Odds were that the five minutes we had been exposed were not on Knox’s screen.
“Me friends?” BT asked me. We were off to the side. “You think he might be slow?”
“Knox is going to come here and kill you, kill you all.” There was a sinister sneer on his face.
“Slow or not, he’s a piece of shit,” I said, wanting to beat that upward tilting lip right off his face.
“You ready?” Sanders asked Biddeford. The other man nodded.
“Hey! What are you doing? I’m part of the Knox army. You can’t do anything to me, I’m untouchable.”
Biddeford punched the man hard enough it hurt me.
“You tell us what we want to know, and we won’t do anything to you. Much. How’s that?” Sanders asked.
“I ain’t telling you shit.” There was still a sneer, but it had dropped a little of its pop.
“As part of my officer’s training,” Sanders enlightened our prisoner, “I was part of an exercise called SERE: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life, and that is including active hot zones. That being said, when we were captured, which was inevitable, by the way, part of the process was being waterboarded,”
Sanders continued in almost a fatherly way–certainly as a good teacher might, “In my head, I was thinking, ‘How bad can it be? Sure, I was captured, but we were still all on the same team, right? They weren’t going to seriously injure or maim me.’ So, you’re lying down and restrained, an old shirt is stretched tight over your face and head so you can’t move, and then water is poured over your head. Sounds fairly pedestrian really. But Barry, I’m going to tell you something, when that water starts splashing up your nose and into your mouth, some primitive instinct kicks in. Between the darkness and the drowning…well, I don’t know if I have been more scared in my life. And it wasn’t a rational fear, not something I could control. I knew where I was and who I was with, but the sheer panic in my body and brain completely took over.”
“You can’t do that shit. There’s some sort of rules of engorgement!” he shouted.
Listen, I realize I have the mentality of a five-year-old, but if this hadn’t been such a serious scene, I would have busted out laughing. I turned my head and coughed.
Sanders nodded to Biddeford as he and Winters pulled the zip-tied man down to his knees.
“I’d rather not do this. You ready to do a little talking?” Sanders asked. They picked the man up and placed him on a table. “How
about now?”
“How about fuck you?” Barry said.
“Fair enough.” Again, Sanders nodded. Winters pulled a towel over Barry’s face. He was struggling, shaking his head back and forth, at least, as much as the pulled taut towel would allow. Biddeford started pouring water over his head from an orange, Home Depot five-gallon bucket. The sputtering and choking was followed immediately by whimpers to stop.
“Again,” Sanders said to Biddeford.
It was a strange sensation to watch a man get tortured; not something I was completely on board with, but this man could hold the key to me getting the rest of my family back, so basically fuck him. By the time Biddeford had emptied that second pail the man was sobbing; he had absolutely been broken. I honestly didn’t want to know how much torture I could endure, but fuck, I hope it would be more than ten gallons of water that did me in.
“Stop, stop!” he sputtered. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Please, just stop.”
Probably a good thing he was done, because Biddeford didn’t have any more water. Talk about an economy of tribulation.
“Pretty unique sensation, isn’t it?” Sanders seemed bemused. “Alright. Let’s start with where Knox is.”
Barry spewed forth more information than a breached server from a fortune 500 company. Even started talking about how he missed his Miyaku, which some guy had taken from him; we felt bad until we found out that was not his girlfriend in the normal sense but just his anime pillow. When he began to talk about the people of mine they had captured, I thought my heart was going to break through my chest; felt like I was the one drowning.
When we were all done and had gotten more information than we ever wanted, we went upstairs to figure out a game plan.
“What…what about me?” Barry begged.
“You’re staying here, Barry,” Sanders said. “I mean, unless you want to fight on our side.”
Silence from the table, and then he spoke just as the door was closing. “You can’t leave me here. I’ll die! And it’s dark! I don’t want to die in the dark!”
“Biddeford, put a gag on him, please,” Sanders said.
I looked to BT. I didn’t disagree with what the Major was doing, but holy fuck if it wasn’t hardcore.
We went to the dining room. Sanders pulled out a map of the area and spread it out; Knox was about a mile away in a small office building.
“I know that place,” Winters said. “Mostly brick. Got a couple of windows on street level. Fairly secure–especially against a small assault. It’s two stories and has clear lines of sight in these three directions.” He traced his finger on the map.
“It stands to reason if Knox has any sort of military mind, he will have patrols out, especially for this blind spot,” Sanders said. “We don’t really have the numbers or the equipment to do this,” Sanders was looking at me.
“Listen, Major, you’ve already done more than I could have ever hoped for. My own life is in your debt, but my family is in there. I can’t walk away from this, but I understand if you do.”
“No part of that was me walking away from it; I’m just saying it’s long odds for success.”
“Long odds?” BT laughed. “Shit, man, we haven’t had any odds for so long that even long ones are welcome.” I fist bumped the man. Winters and Biddeford got a kick out of that. Sanders, not so much.
With Tommy and Travis, we were seven strong heading into the teeth of Knox’s army. I would have brought Justin and Tracy, but someone needed to stay and watch that group and I didn’t think two more guns were going to change anything. We got close enough to the building to get some visuals. Looked like a party on the roof; had to have been a dozen people patrolling up there. The street was much more modest, six men with guns that we could see; had to guess more than a dozen we couldn’t. Creeping up was out of the question. Brute force, which was my preferred method, also seemed unrealistic. Sanders was just beginning to direct us to the only approach that had some merit when Knox showed himself.
“Talbot!” he shouted. “Just come out. We have some things we need to discuss!”
I looked up and flipped the techno-bird in the sky, aptly enough, the bird.
“Come, come. There’s no reason to be rude. Don’t make me compel you to come out into the open.” Before I could do anything, he nodded to someone off to the side, then my daughter appeared with a rather large revolver held to her head.
“What are you doing?” Sanders asked when I got up.
“He knows we’re here, and that’s my daughter. What do you expect me to do?” I stood my ground.
“It’s nice to know you’re reasonable.” Knox was smiling, which was further unsettling. “Just a couple more things, though. Really going to need you to put the rifle down and the rest of your little Girl Scout troop is going to have to come out as well. I don’t want any accidents to happen.”
I undid the strap holding my rifle and placed it on the ground. “I’m here–let’s trade. Me for my daughter,” I yelled.
“Ah, not that simple, really. There are some things we need to discuss first. This is an all or nothing scenario, and trust me, I’m not trying to be dramatic when I tell you the clock is ticking.”
BT came out.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked.
“We stand together, brothers forever.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but if you’re dating my sister that’s going to get real awkward.”
“You know?”
I turned to him. “Well, I didn’t know for sure. Not until now.”
“Shit,” BT muttered.
“You two done? Everyone, Talbot, or I’ll kill them all and do what I can on my own.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I whispered.
“He’s insane. How the fuck do I know?” BT responded.
“You two idiots ever hear of a directional microphone?” Knox asked. “Listen, I’m going to make this easy–even something a Marine can understand. Phillips, get the screen. Going to do an audiovisual presentation for you. Pretty sure you’ll figure it out quick enough.”
Heard a generator kick on and then a large screen television was brought onto the roof; two of Knox’s men were holding it up.
“In for a dime.” I started walking closer.
“You’re pretty cheap with your life.” BT was matching my strides.
“I’ll say. Now I have to split it. Can’t buy much with a nickel.”
The screen powered on. I was actually watching myself walk toward Knox. Hated this show, got bad reviews and had horrible plot lines. Who willingly gives themselves up to a madman?
“Only have another two minutes of view time; you might want to get closer,” Knox warned. “Not sure if we’ll be able to keep up this cease-fire agreement for another forty-five minutes.”
The guards at the building entrance let us in. We walked by at least fifty soldiers and they watched us pass with murderous intent in their eyes. Can’t say I was a fan of that gauntlet. My heart soared when I saw my daughter.
“I’m here. Put that gun down or I’m going to shove it up your ass,” I told the man. He sniffed, shrugged a little and then lowered the gun, putting it back in its holster. Nicole came to me and hugged me tightly.”
“We’re alright. Just hear him out, dad,” she said. I didn’t like that at all. I’d read about Stockholm Syndrome, but never understood it. Who in the hell starts to identify with the crazy people holding you hostage? I always thought that excuse was a pile of shit.
I kept watching the screen as Knox fiddled with the controls on the device and panned out. Wasn’t a few seconds later when I think my stomach dropped out through my anus. Too much? Because fuck if that isn’t what it felt like.
“So, which is it?” Knox asked. “Like a kick to the teeth or to the balls?”
“Both,” I told him honestly.
“How many?” BT asked. I was too transfixed by the sight to say anything.
“Software start
ed to freeze up somewhere around ninety-five thousand, figure that might be a little light, but what’s a couple tens of thousands among friends?”
“You didn’t do this?” I finally managed to ask.
“If I had this much power, the world would already be mine,” he said. “This is why I haven’t put a bullet in your head. I’m not sure what, if anything, your group can do, but it looks like we’re going to need each other’s help to get out of this.”
I didn’t even know where to begin. The small town we were in was surrounded by zombies, and not just a few scattered around, but one, giant, thick unbroken circle around the whole town and we were in the middle, like a bullseye. “How…I mean, how could this happen? Where could so many zombies come from…and why gather like this?”
“I was more than hoping you might have an answer,” he said.
“How many men do you have?” I asked.
He didn’t hesitate. “A hundred and twenty, and I’ve radioed for the rest to come down here; total’s about five hundred.”
Never had I thought we were so outmanned by Knox. Figured he had forty at the most, sure, still pretty bad, but not “pulling dried rat shit flakes from your cereal” fucked. Oh, and just in case you didn’t know, there used to be an acceptable level of rat feces allowed by the government to be in your cereal. Bon appétit.
“Talbot, what is going on up there?” Sanders asked.
I’d been so taken back by the pictures on the screen I almost forgot what we were here to do.