Another bowl later Tony watched the man sit up and look around. He completed the motion with no discomfort, and far too fast for Tony. There was no way his pain disappeared like that without powerful drugs. No one outside of a comic book could mend a busted bone in just an hour.
Bicycle man turned his head left, then right, searching the road and his nana’s front yard for anything interesting. He didn’t see anything that motivated him to get up, and he remained there, sitting up, still as a statue. His bent bicycle with one tire was just a few feet away
He sat like that–like a toppled mannequin–for almost 15 minutes before Tony heard his nana coughing. Bicycle man heard her too. His head jerked directly at her bedroom window, and the grandson leapt off the bed. He had to silence her, or bicycle man would come at them.
He bolted down the hall and through the shut door of his nana’s bedroom. Her little body was in the center of the full size bed she’d owned forever, chest racked up and down as her phlegm-filled lungs rebelled. She rolled half onto her side and wheezed as she had a momentary reprieve from the bout of hacking. Tony jumped on the bed beside and grabbed a spare pillow. The act made his sliced palm pulsate with pain and he had to close his eyes to maintain his composure.
“Nana. Nana, shhh. There’s a dead man outside who can hear you cough. Please, stop,” he pleaded with her in a whisper against her ear. She smelled like stale tobacco.
She coughed again, nodding in some kind of acknowledgment. Tony moved the pillow closer to his grandmother’s head.
“Nana, quiet,” he begged.
She coughed. Tony put the pillow directly against her head, making a barrier between her fit and the zombie in the yard. His eyes started to well as he feared he’d have to smother her until the zombie left. He wouldn’t kill her. He’d only do it until the zombie left. He couldn’t hurt her, wouldn’t hurt her, he could never forgive himself it he did but he…
She stopped.
He pulled the pillow away, racked with the anxiety and raw fear that he’d actually smothered her, but he hadn’t. Her chest rose and fell, calm, and smooth. Her eyes stared off towards the corner of the room, vacant, and half asleep. He bolted back to the room that was now his home and peered through the crack between the towel’s edge, and the window frame.
Bicycle man had moved halfway across the lawn, and now lay on his stomach, propped up on his arms in what looked like the middle of a pushup. He had aimed his body towards his nana’s bedroom. He stayed like that for minutes as Tony’s heart threatened to pound its way up and out of him through his eye sockets. Five minutes later, the zombie still stared at his nana’s window and Tony knew her next cough was only a matter of time.
At some point since he returned to his room, one of his nana’s cats had taken up a comfy spot against his calf. On impulse Tony reached down and scooped the feline up, then jumped off his bed. He walked on the balls of his feet through the living room, and into the kitchen. The cat in his hand squirmed and meowed, catching on that something strange was happening to it. Each step closer to the door the cat’s noises became more alarmed, and loud.
Tony undid the bolt on the door, and opened it. Warm summer air came in, and he threw the cat out so it landed in the middle of the driveway, just past the station wagon that hadn’t been driven in a month.
He pulled the door shut, twisted the lock and tip toed back into his room and towel he’d pulled a bit to the side. When he looked, bicycle man had moved. The cat had drawn his attention.
On his mangled leg he’d tried to stand and failed. Tony could tell because just below the knee the calf and foot hung at a 45 degree angle to the side. The meat of the man’s lower leg was stuck in that position and Tony couldn’t help but think a bone was lodged from a compound fracture that had happened. Why he’d died the teenager didn’t know but Tony at last had his proof the man wasn’t human anymore.
Ravenous, horrid and hateful bicycle man used his three good limbs to crawl and dig his way across the lawn towards the car and the cat, making no sound other than what the scrapes of his limbs made against the grass, then the gravel.
Tony couldn’t hear him breathe, and he should’ve.
In the morning bicycle man was long gone, as was the cat he’d thrown. Tony didn’t see any blood through any of the windows.
Nana never asked him about her missing cat, and Tony never offered to bring it up. And perhaps most heart breaking for Tony was that he didn’t think twice about lying to his nana.
- Part Seven -
…And Then it came in the Front Door
Several muggy, snore and cough filled nights later, Tony sat on the edge of his nana’s bed, near the door that led to the hall. Surrounding the bed were the 3 dogs and now just 3 cats that loved her as he did. Despite their love for Nana, the Guinea Pigs and birds were in the living room.
She wore a thin, floral print nightgown Tony had seen her cook a hundred breakfasts in. The garment was her favorite of all her house clothes, and between his fits of crying Tony thought it fitting that the gown would be the last thing she wore alive.
Young Tony wasn’t a doctor, but he knew his nana’s time was short. The unhappy animals did too.
Her coughing had gotten worse since the car accident outside. Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was a lifetime of smoking, maybe it was allergies, maybe it was just her time. She spat up wad after wad of thick, dark mucus until she didn’t have the energy to spit, or the tissues to spit in, and then the stuff sat in her throat and vibrated in an unholy tone, reverberating her ill chest like a broken organ. She was drowning.
Since the morning she continued to breathe in shallow gasps, but her eyes weren’t opening. She hadn’t eaten or drank anything either, and Tony knew she’d wet the bed. The room stank of her urine.
“Did my bedroom stink when I wet the bed, Nana? I bet it did. You never would’ve said anything though.”
As the sun rose, a sliver of light slipped in through the crack between the side of the blinds and the window frame on the east side of the house. The white beam cut through the dust and pollen, leaving a white wall suspended in the air. Tony imagined the white light was the barrier between life and death. On this side of the light, everyone was alive. On the other side of the light… not so much.
Then his nana’s ragged, wet intake of air stopped, and his imagination was made wrong. The two cats that had been on the bed stood, and jumped off. One of the dogs whined and the others left the room.
“Nana?”
Her body remained still.
“Nana?”
Still nothing.
“Christina Angellini?” he tried her full name. Most of her name came out okay, but a good portion of it was composed of somewhat verbal sobs.
She did nothing, and Tony knew then and there he had several problems on his hands. He was alone now. Really and truly alone. He had a dead body in the house. Dead bodies came back as zombies.
He didn’t have a plan for this, but set out to make one right quick. As he went about it, he cried, and the dogs whined beneath the kitchen table.
*****
He knew Nana was dead, and that she didn’t feel pain, but he couldn’t bear the idea of smashing her head in, or stabbing her in the eye, or doing any kind of damage to her. He loved her, and she deserved better than that.
Tony ushered the dogs and cats out of her room and into the hallway. He shut the door behind him and went through the living room and kitchen, and after getting his sickle handy and peering out the windows of the kitchen, he stepped outside into the morning. Bicycle man was long gone, and he couldn’t hear anything in the vicinity. As the birds chirped, he went to the shed in the backyard.
Swinging his sickle left and right in the tall grass he got to the door and undid the clasp. Tony tucked the sickle away and pulled the metal doors open, revealing his grocery store bounty of canned juice in cardboard flats. He hadn’t touched the drinks yet, and hoped he never had to.
Two flats of six tin ca
ns at a time he moved them from the shed to the kitchen floor. It took him the better part of the hour as the heat of the day grew, and as he became drenched in sweat. By the time he had the shed cleared of food and the few usable items he’d lost track of time, and had almost forgotten about why he was doing what he was doing. Every lifted case made his damaged hand feel worse and worse, and all he could do was fixate on the predictable agony each case brought him. By the time he finished the pain ran all the way up his arm to the shoulder.
When one of the dogs whined as he dropped a case of apple juice, his memory started working.
“Oh no. Nana. I got to get her moving.”
Tony tucked his sickle into his jeans pocket (he’d made a clever incision in the bottom of the pocket the blade slipped through) and made sure he had his grandpa’s buck knife handy. He could never hurt his nana, but the weapon was courage in real form, and he felt better having it.
Through the stale kitchen that hadn’t smelled like cooking in days and the living room that stank of guinea pig shit he headed. Down the hall and to the door of his nana’s bedroom. He pressed an ear to the thin, hollow door and listened. He prayed for the sound of her breathing.
He heard nothing.
He twisted the knob with great care, doing everything he could to avoid making noise. His efforts were rewarded; the door made no sounds as he pushed it inward. Lying in the center of the bed was nana, still as the sheets beneath her. The room still stank of her dying piss.
“Hey Nana. I’m sorry that took so long, but I needed to move the food back into the house. I’m going to put you in the shed now. I’ll carry you out. Just gotta stay still for me while we move, and all should be great.”
Tony let the dead body of his nana listen to his explanation and when she didn’t respond, he decided she’d heard him, and had agreed to the terms of his offer. He folded his grandpa’s knife and slid it into the pocket opposite his sickle, which was soon tossed on the bed. The garden tool was cumbersome in his pocket as he tried to lift his nana.
He’d envisioned lifting her up like a hero off the cover of a romance novel but that hope was dashed. She wasn’t a big person by any means, but Tony wasn’t like the men on the covers of those books. He was a skinny kid who lifted cans of Coke and did math homework eagerly.
When he tried to pick her up and put her over his shoulder his back gave out, and he dropped her with zero grace back on the bed. He almost began to ball out tears over dropping his nana but regained his composure when he remembered she was already dead, and that he dropped her on her back, on the bed. Not the worst thing that could’ve happened by a long shot.
After doing the math on it, he got her moving by putting his arms under hers, and interlocking his hands across her breasts. With her feet on the floor he could walk backwards and more or less have her own feet support some of her weight. Not majestic or heroic looking, but she would move, and it would be good. He knew his mother and father would approve.
He backed up down the hall, through the smelly living room and into the kitchen. He almost tumbled on the cases of juice he’d just brought in, but managed to catch himself at the last second. The back of his ankle whacked good and hard against one of the tall cans, sending a jolt of pain up to his knee but he’d live. In fact, he noticed that with the ankle pain distracting him from how bad the cut on his hand hurt, his nana had grown lighter by half.
“Nana, I feel like I could carry you all the way outside,” Tony said. “Strong as an ox.”
Nana stopped moving.
Not “Tony stopped walking.” Tony kept backing up, but Nana stopped moving. He backed two feet away from her before he realized she’d latched onto the edge of the cabinets near the kitchen. With old hands she’d clawed into the soft, stained pine and put an anchor down. Tony stood, stunned and elated that she had remained upright after he let her go.
“Nana, you’re alive?” he muttered to the white back of her curly haired head.
Without replying she spun and faced her grandson Antonio. The woman standing in front of Tony was his nana. This was her, and this was her kitchen but Nana wasn’t home anymore. The fierce brown eyes she’d had his whole life were gone. Instead she had sickly yellow-gray orbs embedded in her jaundiced, sunken skull. Her lips peeled back as her bizarre eyes fixed on Tony, showing him her tobacco stained teeth.
“Nana?”
As the dogs went wild barking, she launched at him. Faster than he’d ever seen her move at any other point in his life she used her hands and legs to propel her whole body forward onto his. The slight boy wasn’t ready, not in the least, and he went down on the stacked flats of large juice tins. His back careened off the pile of cans and the weight of his grandmother drilled the corner of the beverages deep into the area between his shoulder blades. He cried out in pain as the tender muscles near his spine were split apart by the impact. Both of their bodies tilted sideways as she snapped her teeth at him and they spun, reversing their order.
Tony came to a rest atop his grandmother, face to face. She bit up at him, digging her claws into his neck and pulling down, trying to fit his face, his neck into her mouth.
“Nana, please! Let go of me!” Tony screamed as he pushed away with all he had. But he was already tired. He’d just carried all those drinks in, and he hadn’t slept and wasn’t in good shape and she was endless… She’d never tire, and eventually–soon – he would get tired and-
Tony watched as the top row of her teeth came loose and slid in her mouth.
False teeth.
“Forgive me,” he whispered to her. Tony leaned to the left, and punched her in the face as hard as he could with the right.
The fist knocked Nana’s face sideways and dislodged her upper dentures. The half-circle shaped prosthetic spit came almost all the way out of her mouth as she continued to bite up and down. The hard plastic of the two apparatus’ clicked and snapped as she chomped and yanked down on him.
Emboldened by his sudden willingness to fight, he punched her again, glancing the knuckles of his fist across her lips and knocking the upper denture all the way out of her mouth. It skidded across the floor of the kitchen and went underneath the oven.
She kept biting, and one of the dogs behind him joined her. A sharp stabbing pain pierced his ankle where he’d banged it just a bit earlier. A fast glance told him it was the sheepdog his grandpa loved, Kojak.
“Dammit, get off me Kojak!”
The dog yelped in fear and backed away, but growled at him the second it stopped moving. Then it started barking in his face at full volume.
Tony managed to knock his nana’s left arm off his neck with his right, and then pinned it down with his forearm. As she kept biting, and yanking with the other arm Tony kept his relative cool (at least he hadn’t screamed yet) and pulled the other arm off. Once that arm was pinned under his forearm, it was a simple matter to wiggle his legs and trunk up until he sat on her chest. He put his knees on his nana’s upper arms, pinning her under him and rendering her harmless. She twisted her head side to side and tried to bit his inner thighs, but with half a mouth of fake teeth she couldn’t get purchase on his jeans.
Tony looked around and saw a wooden spoon on the stove. He reached over, grabbed it, and slipped it into his nana’s mouth when she opened it. A quick pry later the U-shaped bottom plate came out.
He laughed like a madman, and as he caught his breath, he tried to think of how he was going to get nana out to the shed. Kojak continued to bark and pace around the kitchen, angry at the grandson.
When Tony finished plotting how to get her out of the house, and followed through on the plan, he returned to the sedate yellow filled with frightened, angry animals and curled up into a ball in his grandpa’s recliner. He fell asleep by noon, and cried as he slept through the hot summer day.
None of the cats sat in his lap, and none of the dogs sat near his feet.
- Part Eight -
PONG. PONG. PONG.
Just like Nana, Tony wa
s hungry.
Just like Nana, Tony went without.
His fear of running out of the food he had led him down the path of starvation. Surrounded by gallon upon gallon of vitamin laced, delicious, sugary drinks, and boxes of cereal and dry milk, and a metallic mountain of canned goods he ate next to nothing. He feared starving so much, he had found a way to save his food and starve anyway.
Out in the red metal shed he heard as his nana banged against the wall over and over again.
PONG.
PONG.
PONG.
Her pace had become almost perfect in its robotic precision, and it was one of the things on the long list of things driving Tony mad. He’d sit there, looking out the window above the sink for hours, listening for the sound of her voice in the metal coffin he’d put her in.
“Antonio, it’s Nana. I’m okay. Please come outside and let me out so I can cook you some supper,” he hoped he’d hear. But no. Just PONG. PONG. PONG.
Even his terrible sleep offered no reprieve. He’d sit in the dark, sweating under the cleanest of all his stained sheets thinking about his family so he’d dream of them but when he succumbed to sleep the dreams he had were never the ones he wanted. He’d dream of his frightened grandpa, and after his nana died he’d dream about her, but he never once dreamed of his mother, or father or little brother.
Until one night he dreamt of his little brother Frank, and somehow that made everything worse. Tony stopped trying to dream about his family.
The dogs never trusted him again. They’d skulk in the other rooms of the house when he was awake and when he slept, they’d slink into the kitchen with the cats and eat their meager rations, dispensed by the weary and lonely teenager. He’d let them out each morning to piss and shit, and they’d circle the shed a thousand times before he got angry and hissed at them to return. They’d come in, frightened of him, and inevitably they’d shit on the kitchen floor. Tony had no paper towels left to clean the crap up with, so he used a spatula, and flung it out the door into the neighbor’s yard with his puffy, swollen hand.
The Shed Page 4