by Mark Tufo
“Dammit.”
I wondered briefly if there was a rear entrance right as I brought the curved edge of the tire iron down on the glass. My arm reverberated heavily for my effort. The glass mostly held—it was still up, but now there was a large fracture line running north and south for a couple of feet.
Murph, the pimple popper, had come over to investigate my work, his head tilting from side to side as the crack elongated on its own. He knew what was happening. As I began to wind up to smack the glass again, my new buddy had other plans. He backed up. For a second, my head may have tilted as I was trying to reason out what the hell he was doing. I stepped back quickly when I finally caught up to his actions. Murph had lowered his head and was running straight for the glass. It sounded like a rifle shot as the glass exploded. I think he should have waited a bit for the crack to get bigger or me to strike it again, because he was pretty dazed, looking like he had just gone a couple of rounds in a prize-fight boxing match and had been more on the receiving end than the giving.
I did not give him a chance to recover as I brought the full weight of the tire iron to bear on the top of his skull. My arm shook almost as violently as it had when I struck the glass. It was possible Zitty Murph had always been known for a thick head, and that was why his career had stalled at gas station attendant…or he was just a new-and-improved variation on zombies, one of the skullers. I brained him again, and two more times, before I finally heard the telltale sign of bone cracking.
“Motherfucker, you’re going to give me carpal tunnel!” I yelled at him as I brought the iron down again.
This time I was rewarded with brain matter. Murph fell to his knees, his teeth chattering like he’d been locked in a meat freezer. He pitched forward face first and was still.
“So worth it,” I said as I stepped over his body and headed in.
My eyes still adjusting to the gloom, I almost missed the movement of my next obstacle. It couldn’t have been much older than five. His teeth were bared, and he had a rapacious look on his face, yet he was cautious, as if he knew just how dangerous I was. He wanted to eat; he just didn’t want to die more. He ducked behind one of the aisles.
Are you kidding me? I thought. He was going for stealth mode. I get that he was at a distinct size advantage, but when did zombies figure that out?
“Listen, you little fucker, get your ass out here!”
A can of peas rolled down an aisle toward me. I swear I could hear eerie mood music playing in the background. You know the kind they play in the movies, it masks the sound of the monster sneaking up on the character that is about to get filleted with a machete or, in this case, have the back of his knees ripped out. My prize was tantalizingly close. Was it worth it? I felt for the kid that had lost his childhood and thus his life, but the thing running around here wasn’t him…not anymore. If I didn’t kill him, I was just adding to the problem now that I’d allowed him a means of escape.
He might have been shooting for stealth by hiding behind things, but his brain had not quite figured out the part about heavy footfalls. I could hear him running like he was caught playing video games after bedtime and was now stomping back to his room in a huff. I had a good sense where he was, but this cat-and-mouse shit was unnerving, especially since I wasn’t convinced I was the cat.
I walked quietly down the small aisle I was fairly certain he was at the end of. When I turned the corner, he looked about as surprised as I did. I cocked my arm back, hesitating when he placed his arm in front of his face and head in a defensive gesture; that was a human motion. He had me second-guessing my intent, and it was nearly my demise. I don’t know if the zombies have only the mind they have taken over to use as their host, or if they operate independent of it, but I think if this kid had been older I would have been screwed. He looked to the side and past me. He saw something, and a five-year-old just can’t play that stuff off. They don’t have the experience.
I wheeled to see the boy’s mirror image. “Twins!” I shouted just as I brought the point of the tire iron straight down.
The kid had gotten that close, his feral rage twisting his face into a mask of hate and hunger. I pulled the point out of the top of his skull and thrust the kid away. I didn’t even bother to turn and see if his brother was coming; I knew he was. I swung for all I was worth. I was a little low, the blow catching him on the edge of his shoulder, glancing off to hit him just below the ear. It didn’t kill him, but it did have enough force to send him skittering away, giving me some room. I spun to check on the status of his brother, but he was having a serious disconnect between body and brain, as half of his body was moving while the other side was drooped in disuse. I brought the tire iron down, ending the life of the world’s youngest stroke victim.
I moved quickly to the other one. He was dazed. I did a quick check to make sure he wasn’t a triplet or some crazy octo-child thing. When I came up to him, iron raised, his hand went up again in defense.
“I’m not falling for that this time.” Then the little bastard’s mouth moved. Sound didn’t come out, but I would’ve had to have been blind not to see the word “please” being formed on his lips. “Fuck you!”
I swung for the fences, his pleading instantly turning into the more familiar sounds of hate. Maybe I put something more into that swing than I thought I could, or perhaps I was so disgusted that the monster inside of the boy was using him in such a way as to make him appear more human so that killing him would be more difficult. Like I needed any more guilt in my existence. Whatever the case, that tire iron went three-quarters through that little boy’s skull. His head fell in on itself in an attempt to fill in the space.
“Nature abhors a vacuum!” I spouted insanely.
All manner of matter sluiced from the gigantic wound, coating my weapon, the lower parts of the boy’s face and his torso. I let the iron go, allowing the thing in front of me to fall. I kicked him in the midsection, sending his remains to the wall and away.
My chest was heaving like I’d been doing wind sprints. I’d almost forgotten why I’d come in at all. I walked over to the side of the store and bent down. “Still worth it,” I said as I picked up the case of beer.
I didn’t even wait until I got out of the store before I cracked one open. It’s tough to call warm beer in a can the nectar of the gods. But as I stepped out into the warm embrace of the sun, blue sky and birds chirping in the distance—yeah, I could say that. I tilted my head back and just poured the entire contents down my gullet. It tasted something like wet metal shavings mixed with donkey piss, and it was heaven.
I downed another one before I moved a foot. I almost started heading back to Tommy and Porkchop when I remembered what the hell I was doing down here in the first place. I rummaged around for the span of three more downed beers before deciding I was not going to be able to find a gas can. Another idea popped into my head, most likely fueled by my beverage. I checked the eight or nine cars in the lot to first see if any of them would start; that was a no go. I then decided which one was the lightest and pushed it over to the seemingly untapped underground gas tanks. I went over and grabbed the siphoning kit. I knew the battery in the car had some juice in it, because the dome light had come on when I opened the door.
“Come on, baby, do me right.”
I had placed one end of the hose down into the well, the other into the fuel tank of the VW. I hooked up the terminals to the battery, flipped the switch and stepped back. I was not at all certain how this was going to turn out. The little motor was spinning, so that was a good sign. Then I saw the hose moving. (I, umm, had to do a quick adjustment when I realized I’d set the thing up backwards and was pulling gas from the car and sending it into the ground. Hey! It wasn’t like anything was labeled.) A minute later, I was back in business. It wasn’t a fast process, and I was able to down another beer as I waited. When gas started falling onto the ground, I stopped, unhooked everything, and stuck it in the back seat.
“It would be cooler if you
started.”
I stuck what remained of the case of beer on the front seat. Out of habit I turned the radio on and was assailed with static nearly as loud as a jet taking off. I lowered the volume and looked around. The car itself was worth about five hundred bucks, but the speakers and amp installed had to be double that. What was weird, though, was the stereo he had in place. It looked like something pulled from salvage. It had knobs and a cassette player. Who still has a cassette player?
“Who does this?” I asked aloud. “Well, if there’s a cassette player, there has to be cassettes.”
I checked everywhere…nothing. It wasn’t until I shoved my fingers down into between the cracked leather casing around the emergency brake that I got my first hint of success.
“Please be Zeppelin.” My tongue was firmly entrenched between my teeth as I desperately maneuvered my fingers around trying to get a hold of the wily cassette.
I finally pinched a corner between middle and index fingers. “Gotcha!” I pulled it out between the thin opening. “Oh, come on.” I was looking at the artist’s name on the front. “Barbara Streisand? Really?” Shrugging, I popped it into the player.
I grabbed the steering wheel with my right hand as my left grabbed the frame of the door. I started pushing, every few feet taking a second to wet my whistle. Let’s just say that, by the time I was within earshot of Tommy and Porkchop, I was lit like a cheap cigar and singing The Way We Were at the top of my lungs.
Tommy and Porkchop came down and helped those last few hundred feet.
“You alright?” Tommy asked, looking at the fair amount of gore I was wearing.
“I am now,” I said, raising another beer to toast. After I told him all that had happened, he almost soured my mood a bit.
“You realize, Mr. T, we could have driven the truck down to the gas station and filled it up, right?”
Actually I hadn’t realized that, but now I had to play it off like I had. “Yeah, but then I wouldn’t have been able to listen to Send in the Clowns.” That was the only title I could remember, because I actually had to fast forward past it. I can’t stand clowns.
We filled up the truck from the car. Well, Tommy did. I was doing my best to polish off the case. They say drinking alcohol doesn’t solve any problems, well, neither does drinking milk. At least with booze you can forget for a little while. Horrible reasoning or genius; depending on whether you had just started or were suffering through the after-effects.
We stayed on that overpass the rest of the day and night. We pulled the truck’s canvas roof back so that we could see the stars as we laid down in the back in relative safety. Tommy didn’t mind standing watch—or he didn’t trust me to stay awake. Either way, Porkchop and I did some serious stargazing under a brilliant sky. I’d just been looking up at Orion, or maybe Lupus, when I felt a heavy push on my shoulder. I expected to have limited sight due to the darkness, I immediately had to shield my face from a nearly noon sun.
“What the hell?” I said, rolling to my side, doing my best to hide from the sunlight’s intense scrutiny.
“We should get going, Mr. T,” Tommy told me.
“Beef stew! Me and Tommy went back to the gas station and found it!” Porkchop was holding up a spoonful of something that looked and smelled pretty much like Henry’s wet dog food. “Want some?”
“I’m good.” I sat up, debating which was the worst enemy: the sun or the food thing Porkchop was eating. I waited until the boy was done before I got out of the truck and sat down next to him. I was in pretty decent shape considering how much I drank but definitely not at a hundred percent.
“You hear that?” Tommy came from around the other side of the truck.
“Sorry, probably my stomach gurgling.”
“It’s a car.” Porkchop was holding up a pair of binoculars that looked like they could be used to view Mars.
“Where were those?” I asked, scratching my head.
“Back of the gas station,” Tommy answered.
“How long have you guys been up? Forget it. We should probably hide.” We had no weapons that would be worth a damn in a firefight. “Let’s go, kiddo.” I picked up Porkchop who was still looking through his over-sized field glasses.
***
“What’s gotten into this dog?” BT was grumbling. Henry was uncharacteristically jumping from one seat to the other while also barking. He finally made the leap to the front, landing squarely in Tracy’s lap.
“Ooomph. Oh, Henry, I’ve told you before…you’re not a lap dog,” Tracy admonished, but he wasn’t listening. His back paws were firmly dug into her midsection with his front paws on the dash. His stubby tail was furiously going from side to side. “I’ve only ever seen him that happy when he sees Mi—”
“Truck!” Travis said, pointing up to an approaching overpass.
“Military.” BT’s eyebrows furrowed.
Henry was barking now.
“Stop the truck,” Tracy told BT.
He’d taken over the duties after Tracy had nearly driven off the road while she was wiping her tearing eyes for the fortieth time. Tracy struggled to check her weapon with Henry in her lap. With the truck stopped and confidence high that she was ready to fire if need be, she opened the truck door. Henry gingerly, but quickly, found his way down, although Tracy did her best to stop him. He ran about fifty feet further down the roadway, then proceeded to sit on his butt, look up at the overpass and bark.
***
“Henry?” I was seeing the dog I was just having a hard time confirming the reality of it. Alcohol hangover can give you a sort of disconnect from reality as you recover.
“BT’s in the driver’s seat,” Porkchop said, but I was already running to the cloverleaf so I could get down to the roadway. It was not easy running in fireman gear.
***
“Is that Tommy waving to us?” Tracy asked, shielding her eyes. “And…and Porkchop, I think.” She had exited the truck along with everyone else. “What are they doing?”
“Fast roping, it’s a way to exit a helicopter quickly,” Trip explained. “I used to have clients do this from time to time, and not always because they had to.”
Tracy gasped as Porkchop came over the guardrail and headed down. Travis and Justin had gone up to greet them. Tommy came down next.
***
I was running for all I was worth. When I came down off that spiral of roadway, I was nearly dizzy. Then my eyes found Tracy. Any discomfort or hangover was blazed away as I picked her up and swung her around.
“We have got to keep meeting like this,” she said as she stroked the side of my face and kissed me even as we twirled.
Henry was barking in excitement, BT was grinning, my boys were walking back to me with Tommy and Porkchop (I don’t know how they beat me down). Gary was crying. Trip, I think, was tripping (if the way he was chasing an imaginary butterfly was any clue) with Stephanie in tow. She waved quickly before resuming her guardian duties.
“Good to see you!” Dennis said.
I hadn’t been this happy since maybe the day I got married, or the birth of each of my kids, or maybe even the day Henry allowed me to adopt him. The world right this very fucking second was a sparkling jewel and I loved it. Even if Deneaux was still out there, even if a Yeti-like animal was roaming around, and especially even if a Vampire tribunal was coming. Right fucking now, everything was fine and I was going to savor each and every second of it, even if it was damned.
Epilogue 1
Tommy and I had a brief respite. The lab wasn’t necessarily the best place to have a heartfelt conversation, but if I’d learned one thing it was this. We might not get another chance. Simple as that. Death hovered around the living like it never had before. Sure we’re all born knowing what the inevitable outcome is, but we’d never had it so violently thrust in our faces before. If Death got paid by the collection of souls, then he had indeed become a very wealthy entity. Maybe some good could come from this—maybe he’d just retire to an island i
n the Bahamas, sipping Mojitos with little umbrellas in them. If nothing else, it was a semi-comforting thought.
“I’m ready to answer your questions, Mr. T.”
“Huh?” I asked, staring up at the ceiling. Chunks of ceiling tiles were clinging to their supports, defying gravity to the last. Some not so successfully if the area we had to clear out to sit down was any indication. The ape had done some serious damage during his stay.
“Questions. I know you have them.”
“I don’t even know where to start, Tommy. I mean…I guess I’d like to know why you were using Ryan Seacrest as a spirit guide or maybe not. Wait, I’ve got it. How many Talbots have you been in contact with?”
“All of them.”
I sat up, the ceiling tiles suddenly losing their luster. “All of them? Over the last five hundred years? How is that even possible? And why?”
“You realize it’s impolite to ask questions one on top of the other, right?” He was smiling.
“Yes, because my biggest concern is being polite. How long have you known me?”
“Longer than you know.”
“Wait, what?” You mean even before the zombies came?”
“I first saw you the day after you were born.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Nope. When you were born, there was a mix-up in the nursery.”
“Wait, let me try to understand what you’re saying. So either I’m not really a Talbot, or I almost got to go home with a different family and live a semi-normal life away from the craziness that comes along with being a Talbot?”
“You nearly went home with the Murphy’s.”