by Mark Tufo
There were four hot spots on the landing, the problem however was that not all were active at the same time. It was like playing Russian roulette with floorboards. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Justin had his suspicions that his dad somehow had the floor rigged. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities. Justin’s right foot came down tentatively. Nothing. He sighed in relief. Next he strategically placed his left foot as close to the banister as possible, more times than not this was a safe bet, but not today. CRAAACK – Justin froze, only the sweat on his forehead had the audacity to move. Nothing stirred, not even Henry. After a thirty-second pause in which Justin expected his mother to come bursting out of her bedroom, nothing happened. He took a quick left which marked his first successful completion down the gauntlet. The next part was going to be equally difficult. On the left of the hallway was his dad’s office which was now Brendon and Nicole’s room. Directly across from it was the bathroom. Justin noticed the light on underneath the bathroom door. If it was his sister, the jig was up before it ever got going. She would not be persuaded to not tell their mother. For the second time in two minutes, Justin found himself frozen. This time, however, it was with indecision. He needed to think of a valid reason for his being in the hallway at this time of the day if his sister came out of the bathroom. Somehow asking her if she wanted to play Monopoly at 6:30 in the morning didn’t seem like a viable option. He then had the idea of getting Brendon awake, convinced and out of the bedroom before his sister returned. Not an acceptable alternative, she would surely go looking for Brendon if she came back and he wasn’t in bed. They’d never get out in time unless of course she had fallen asleep on the john. Justin laughed a little at that picture, he couldn’t for the life of him imagine his prim and proper sister falling asleep on the toilet.
It was the smell that got Justin moving. For a fearful second he thought that a zombie had broken in. When he realized that it only smelled LIKE something had died, and had not actually died, he sprang into motion. Without even looking, Justin quietly shut the office/bedroom door. His sister was lactose intolerant, and even if she had downed a whole cheesecake she was incapable of producing the noxious gas that oozed from beneath the closed bathroom door. Justin was now dead smack in the center of the hallway, between the bathroom and the bedroom. He didn’t want to move for fear that Brendon would get back into the bedroom before Justin could intercept him. He was beginning to get woozy trying to hold his breath. Just when he began to lose his peripheral vision, Justin heard the toilet flush and the sink go on. He exhaled in bliss, only to be rewarded on the inhale with the full blast of pestiferous tang of Brendon’s refuse as the door was opened. Brendon was momentarily stunned by the appearance of Justin at the doorway but quickly recovered.
“You might want to use a different bathroom,” Brendon said quietly with a hint of a smile across his lips.
Justin was trying his best to breathe through his mouth, but the mere thought that he was now ‘tasting’ the essence of Brendon’s offal did little to quell the queasiness that was building up in his stomach.
“Gotta talk to you,” Justin rushed out on exhale, and pointed down the stairs. If Brendon in anyway delayed, Justin would have to go downstairs without him. Justin had promised himself that he would not take another gulp of air anywhere in the vicinity of the ‘death zone.’ Brendon nodded and followed Justin down. The floorboards had not had sufficient time to reset and both boys were able to make it all the way down without so much as a minor crackle. Justin took a few long pulls of fresh air, hoping to evacuate all the poison from his lungs. He felt almost immediately better.
“What were you eating, a rotten rhino?” Justin asked when he had sufficiently cleaned out his airways.
“Did you like that? I was working on that just for you. As a matter of fact I was going to come down and get you so you could get a whiff,” Brendon laughed.
A greasy smile split Justin’s lips. “Thanks man, I appreciate that,” he said sarcastically.
“What’s up?” Brendon asked more seriously. He could tell Justin had something to ask him but was hesitant to come out with it.
“All right, if I ask you something you have to promise if you say no, that you won’t tell Nicole,” Justin said tentatively.
Brendon had to think about this for a moment. If she were to somehow find out that he had important information and had withheld it from her that would not end well. Nicole was all of four foot eleven, but she was a veritable spitfire. Mountains would quake in the wake of her voluminous voice. What she lacked in size she MORE than made up in for in vocals. And to top it off she was quick to anger and so very slow to mellow. Those were not great ingredients if one were to perpetrate a lie. Brendon had learned the hard way.
“Justin, I don’t know if I could do that,” Brendon said in all seriousness. “You know how your sister gets.”
Justin nodded in reluctant agreement. Of course he did, he’d had nineteen years of personal experience. Justin was secretly attempting to find a work around to this dilemma.
“How about this,” Justin started. “What if I ask you something but you don’t tell her until she wakes up?”
“Again, that depends,” Brendon answered. “If it’s important she’ll be pissed that I didn’t wake her to tell her.”
“Damn it,” Justin muttered.
“What’s going on?” Brendon asked, curiosity starting to get the better of him.
“Damn it,” Justin said for the second time. “Here goes nothing. I want to take Travis, Tommy and hopefully you to go get Paul.”
“Your dad’s best friend? Does your dad know? Of course not or we wouldn’t be doing this whole covert conversation in the living room,” Brendon said as he nervously wiped his forehead, even though sweat had not yet begun to form although it would soon. “What makes you think they’ll even let us out of the gate?”
“My dad just left on the semi.” ‘I think,’ Justin thought to himself. “I’ll tell the guys at the gate that he wanted us to follow.” ‘And hopefully they won’t ask where, cuz I have no clue,’ he finished his inner dialog.
Brendon turned to walk back upstairs. Justin became anxious, fearful Brendon had made up his mind and not in the appropriate direction.
“I’m going to get my stuff,” Brendon explained as he now began to play the advanced hopscotch game.
Justin was excited and worried at the same time. He ran downstairs to get the others and get out of the house before he changed his mind. This undertaking was of his design and if anything went wrong it would be his responsibility. This was a little bit more unnerving than making sure the shelves were correctly stocked for the frenetic holiday shoppers at Wal-Mart.
The boys had decided to take Brendon’s Explorer, after some initial resistance. Brendon’s truck had the habit of breaking down at the most inopportune times, but this fact still seemed like a better alternative than facing Mike Talbot if something should happen to his beloved Jeep. With nothing closing in and no elevated terror level, Brendon’s truck, of course, clamored to life easily, just as the sun began to shine under an opaque sky. Brendon pulled up to the gate guard who was putting his hand out to halt them, although this was a useless gesture. It wasn’t like Brendon could miss the five-ton yellow bus.
“Vere are you boys going?” Igor Drudarski, the guard, asked. Igor was a fifty something, fat Russian man who had emigrated over from the former Soviet Union some twenty years previously. He had not lost a hint of his former accent or his profound ability to drink vast quantities of vodka. The sour stench permeated through the truck as he looked over the boys and all the weapons they carried. Tommy smiled back, greedily stuffing a blueberry Pop-Tart into his mouth.
“We have Pop-Tarts?” Travis asked softly.
“Weef did,” Tommy smiled weakly back.
Justin leaned over Brendon a little and subsequently closer to the stink of Igor’s breath. This morning was not working out well at all for his olfactory senses, which had just
recently gotten over the assault at the bathroom.
“Mike Talbot asked us to follow him with some more fire power,” Justin said, with a little more conviction in his voice than he felt.
“You are his boys, no?” Igor asked.
“That’s right,” Justin answered.
“He already had four people with him, what does he need you for?” Igor asked.
“Probably just guard duty,” Travis threw in hastily. Justin silently thanked his brother.
Igor looked at all of them skeptically. “They left over fifteen minutes ago, you know how to get to the armory, yes?”
“Oh yeah,” Justin responded, perhaps a little too eagerly.
Igor pulled his head out from the driver’s side window, not convinced he was receiving the truth, but his main function was to keep people out, not in. He waved the bus driver to pull forward and out of the way.
Be safe, dah?” Igor yelled out. Brendon waved in response. The bus driver closed the gate, not waiting for Igor’s hand signal.
“Which way do I go when I get to Havana?” Brendon asked Justin.
“Uh right,” Justin told him, taking just a fraction of a second longer than appropriate to give the answer.
“You know the way right?” Brendon asked doubtfully.
“Uhhh, most of the way,” Justin said meekly.
“Justin!” Brendon bellowed. “You are going to get us all screwed, this is going to be an all risk and no reward venture! Your sister’s going to kill me, not including what Mike’s gonna do when he realizes I let you talk me into this harebrained scheme. It’s not like we can ask somebody for directions. ‘Hello Mr. Zombie, have you eaten any one lately named Paul Ginner? No? Then can you tell us how we might get there before you? What? You can’t talk?’” Brendon was working himself up into a frenzy. He pulled into a now out-of-commission gas station so he could turn around.
“What are you doing?” Justin screamed in panic.
“We’re going back before we get in any deeper over our heads,” Brendon shot back.
Tommy had finished getting the final few crumbs out of his Pop-Tart bag when he spoke up. “I know the way.”
Brendon and Justin turned to look at Tommy. There was not a hint on his features that he was speaking anything but the truth. Brendon sighed and got back on the road heading in the general direction of Paul’s house.
Travis was busy looking in Tommy’s knapsack for a wayward Pop-Tart. The quartet passed three cars on their way. All three were packed with people and provisions. All the people in those cars looked haunted, harried and in a rush. Not one of them so much as addressed the boys’ presence with even a nod.
“They sure seem in a hurry,” Travis said, putting into words what everyone was thinking. Well, maybe not Tommy. He had somehow pulled out another Pop-Tart from the bag Travis had previously checked. Travis added for Tommy’s ears only, “Do you have a secret panel in there or something?” Tommy just smiled, strawberry goo plastered to his teeth.
“Need any help with that?” Travis asked. Tommy broke off half. Travis couldn’t have been any happier than if he had won a shopping spree at Game Stop.
“You’re gonna need it,” Tommy said cryptically. Travis almost immediately lost all pleasure in the Pop-Tart.
Tommy led them unerringly to their destination. When they were about to make their final left turn onto Paul’s street, Tommy told them they “might want to park here.” Brendon didn’t question him at all as he pulled the car over and shut the engine off in the hopes of not attracting any undue attention.
“Prob’ly didn’t want to do that just yet,” Tommy said. When he didn’t clarify, nobody asked for any further information, not knowing exactly what they would be trying to clarify.
As Brendon opened the door, the telltale redolence of the dead blasted through the car like an Arctic breeze through a windbreaker. What little flavor Travis’ Pop-Tart had maintained had now embittered. The next few minutes were spent securing weaponry and stashing all extra ammo into as many free pockets as possible while still being able to move under the weight.
All fours boys slowly walked the twenty-five yards to the corner of Paul’s street. The smell was intensifying. What was more disturbing was the incessant sounds of the dead. There was no talking, only the loitering shuffle. There was no laughter, only the constant sound of bodies maneuvering for position. There was no human sound, so to speak, there were the plaintive sounds only the dead can make.
Brendon peeked his head around the last privacy fence that marked the delineation between safety and demise. The other three waited expectantly a few feet behind. Paul lived at the end of a cul-de-sac, no more than a hundred yards long. What Brendon saw almost made him turn tail and run. It looked as if the world’s most successful block party was raging. There had to have been at least three hundred lost souls wandering around; most looked as if they had a purpose. Some, however, looked lost and were somehow relieved to be among their own. Brendon, of course wouldn’t swear to that, it was just a feeling he had perceived. He pulled his head back before any of those errant demons had a chance to spot him.
“Uh, I’m not so sure about this, guys,” Brendon said in hushed tones. “There have to be at least a couple hundred zombies. Most of them are clustered around one house. So we might be able to sneak by but I wouldn’t want to bet our lives on it.” Which of course they would be.
Justin asked. “Are they focused on the last house on the right, by any chance?”
“How did you…?” Brendon knew the answer before he finished. “That’s Paul’s, right?”
“Of course,” Travis threw in sarcastically.
As if on cue the three boys looked to Tommy to see if he had any insight into their situation, but he merely smiled back. Their contemplation was interrupted by the sporadic firing of a small caliber pistol coming from the cul-de-sac. Travis ran up to the fence to hazard a look; Justin and Brendon followed. What they saw both lifted their spirits and simultaneously weighed heavy on their hearts. At the apex of the house was the distinctive outline of Paul’s wife Erin. It appeared that she had knocked out the attic vent and was taking some ill-aimed shots at some of her besiegers. The boys were happy she was alive but saddened at the thought of the impossibility of a rescue attempt.
“So obviously a frontal assault is out of the question.” Brendon stated the obvious.
Travis spoke up. “Let’s go through the backyards on this side of the street, and see if we can spot a way in from that vantage point.”
“It’s not really the way we want to go,” Justin said nervously.
“You know what I mean,” Travis answered.
“That’s going to put us about ten feet away from the nearest zombie,” Brendon said. “Will they be able to smell us from that distance?”
“My dad asked the same thing when we went to get Justin. I think they can. But if they are focused on something it takes a lot to get their attention away from the first thing,” Travis said optimistically.
“Let’s hope your dad’s right,” Brendon added.
The brothers nodded in unison. Tommy was busy pulling wayward gobs of Pop-Tart off his shirt and popping them into his mouth.
“All right, let’s fall back to the rear of these houses,” Brendon said, taking charge. He didn’t like the position at all.
The boys moved away from the zombie infestation to traverse behind the houses. Once they got to the house directly across from Paul’s, they quickly climbed over the six-foot privacy fence. Brendon had thought that they might have to leave Tommy behind because of the fence, but he was surprisingly agile and seemed to have the least amount of problem getting over.
“Must be all the sugar,” Brendon mumbled mirthfully to himself.
The boys moved to the front yard, still under concealment of the fence. The smell was unbearable. Even Tommy, who seemed immune to it, stopped eating.
“What’s Paul’s backyard like?” Brendon asked Travis.
“I
t’s heavily sloped down and away from the house, but it won’t do us any good,” Travis answered.
Brendon cautiously looked over the fence. From his vantage point he could tell that the fence that led to Paul’s backyard had been destroyed, most likely from the press of dead flesh against it. The fence hadn’t stood a chance. “Yeah, it’s as likely as not to have as many deaders in the back as in the front.”
Over the preternatural quiet that enshrouded the neighborhood it was easy to hear Erin shout to Paul that she had seen someone over at the Henderson’s house. Paul crowded Erin out of the small opening to take a look. Brendon had quickly jumped down before any zombies could see him, but apparently zombies suffered the same affliction that troubled dogs, they couldn’t follow a pointed finger. And that was exactly what Erin was doing.
“I don’t see anything,” Paul said.
“He was right over there by the fence, you must have scared him away,” Erin answered.
“Yeah I’m sure it had nothing to do with the meat bags below,” Paul responded sardonically.
Travis climbed up the fence when he realized the zombies weren’t turning to investigate Erin’s claims.
“See, there he is again!” Erin said excitedly. “Wait, that’s not the same person.”
“Travis?” Paul said softly, then a little louder “Travis, is that you? Wait don’t answer! Just nod.”
Travis nodded.
“Is your dad here?” Paul asked as hope surged in him. If anyone could get his wife and him out of this jam it would be Mike. The guy had a penchant for getting out of tight jams, the Marine Corps had only added to that legacy. When Travis shook his head no, Paul was dismayed. “How many of you are there?”
Travis held up four fingers. Paul couldn’t imagine that Mike would send his boys alone to get him. He prayed that Mike hadn’t died trying to save him.
“Where’s your dad?” Paul asked. Travis shrugged his shoulders. There was only so much the boy could answer with body movements, but the fact that he didn’t look too upset told Paul volumes.