Etna Station

by Mark Tufo

  Before the zombies came, I would have just stayed there and cried and screamed until someone came to help me, maybe brought me a cold cloth, cradled my head, and waited with me another five to seven minutes for an ambulance to show up. Then I would be rushed to a hospital where I would wait for three hours while they filled out a great number of forms regarding my medical insurance. Then there would be the obligatory hour-long wait at x-ray while the technician does whatever x-ray technicians do, probably shining up those lead sheets, or wiping his lunch off of one.

  Then he or she would put me into positions that would cause more pain, but only for a few seconds. When they were done confirming what everyone and their brother could tell just by looking at me, I’d be wheeled back behind my privacy screen where I would wait another two hours. Invariably, a drunk asshole or a desperate junkie would be put in the curtained off area right next to me. They would yell, swear, sometimes shit themselves and generally be among the biggest douches known to mankind. Sounds pretty awful, doesn’t it? I would have taken that particular scenario in a heartbeat over the one I was in now. Instead of lying in a gown in a safe, clean environment waiting that seven hours on pain medication, tended to by clean, polite healthcare professionals, I had to get up and drag my useless leg behind me, which was right up there with placing my balls into the loving embrace of a cold steel vise and turning the handle until they ruptured. Or I guess I could just get eaten where I lay. Believe me, I considered that an option.

  So far, I’d avoided that particular door prize, but as soon as I saw a zombie poke its head out the window and look down at me, I realized I was about to be a winner if I didn’t act. The zombies were adapting, getting smarter, as all predators do, but that didn’t mean they actually were smart. With a considerable amount of fucking pain, I had to roll out of the way as the zombie that had seen me quite literally pitched head first out the window in its haste to get to me. I’d like to say he crushed his skull; instead, he merely snapped his neck, maybe spine. Normally this would be enough to take out your enemy. Not this one. He couldn’t move anything below his shoulders, but that chomping mouth was entirely too close to my side. More zombies were coming to have a look; I had to move now.

  I got up on my good foot and leg, the pain rocketed up my bad leg like it had been shot through a super-collider. Bursts of agony began to ignite within my skull. I had to hop, as that is the fastest form of locomotion one leg can make. Each hop up meant a violent collision back down to the earth, and just those few inches were enough to jolt my entire being in fresh, ripping torment. Stupid zombies were piling out of the window, most breaking something; less stupid zombies were making their way back downstairs and out the door to find me. It was over. I couldn’t run, there was nowhere to hide; I had some ammo but certainly not enough. I did a quick scan of the fence-enclosed backyard; even if I made it to the barrier I didn’t think I’d be able to climb over it. There was a swing set with a small clubhouse to the side and a decent sized above ground pool. Did I make that clubhouse into my fort, like the kids that lived here before me had done? Didn’t seem like it had worked out too well for them. Anyway, it was too small. I wouldn’t be able to stand or turn very effectively and it was only about six feet off the ground. I’d have zombies tearing at me in seconds.

  It was the pool I was subconsciously moving toward. It was a little more than halfway full, completely green and covered with enough growth as to seem like it had its own hard-pack surface. I was thinking the buoyancy would help take the weight off my ankle and the water would hinder the zombies’ ability to get to me. My traitorous imagination attacked immediately, producing all kinds of nasty things hiding just under that layer of slimy vegetation, but I was fairly certain it wouldn’t be an alligator or anything quite that carnivorous. I was two feet from the ladder and the nearest zombie twenty feet; it was anyone’s guess who would make it to the pool first. The ladder was a piece of shit, the thing wouldn’t have passed quality control in a Chinese sweatshop.

  “Must be French,” I said as I grabbed the rail. The entire thing swung around like it was being buffeted by hurricane force winds. I was hop-jumping up each wrung convinced the thing would collapse somewhere between the three steps I needed to ascend. By the time I got to the top platform, the nearest zombie had run, arms outstretched, right into the ladder, I pitched over to the side and right into the drink. It wouldn’t have been cosmically correct if my bad ankle hadn’t got caught up in one of the rails on the way over the side. My scream was muffled by the scum covered water-like substance as I went down, but it was still very much audible. I was hanging upside down, dangling by a cracked leg and in danger of drowning in three feet of water. Who fucking dies that way in a zombie apocalypse? Pretty un-fucking-dignified, if I’m being honest, and not even close to heroic. Where I was getting so much air to expel my screams was beyond me. But when I took in that first chunk-laced bit of water, I knew my time was growing short.

  I wriggled my leg back and forth violently in an attempt to free myself, maybe it was the lack of oxygen getting to my head or that I was so distracted by the taste of the green algae, but the pain seemed muted, like it was happening to someone else, or possibly to me–but from a distance. Or who knows? Maybe it was because I was too far gone to even care anymore. When the piece of shit ladder finally decided to let go of me, I almost didn’t care anymore, content to lay on the green vinyl bottom of the thick-slime covered pool, the disgusting liquid a couple of feet above my head. I’d swallowed enough of that so-called water that I figured I’d die from some waterborne illness anyway. It was when I felt something with many legs walk across my face that I decided maybe I should get up and face the zombies. I was wondering what effect the slimy liquid I’d splashed into was going to have on my rifle. This particular rifle was not known for its ability to keep shooting while gunked up.

  I came up out of the water, spewing all manner of organic and inorganic material. I coughed up things that looked like half-eaten green-brown moldy tuna fish sandwiches with pickles and maybe some teeth. I was on my knees; it gave me the ability to keep my head above water and also not put pressure on my ankle. Figured it was all for naught anyway, that a couple of dozen zombies were about to join me and like it was free-for-all Saturday at the city pool during the hottest summer in recorded history. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the displeasure of this fine social activity, but it’s not all that fun being in a pool with two hundred other people, packed so tight you can’t touch bottom, you can’t move around – it’s like being the styrofoam popcorn packing in a shipping container. Can’t splash because your arms are locked to your sides, though someone is invariably able to splash obnoxiously near you. Obviously, you can’t swim around. You are not beating the heat because of the press of flesh and the highly unsanitary quality of water filled with people that feel a pool is nothing more than a giant urinal or who are too wedged in to get to a bathroom. Only your feet are cooled by the water, but that’s no good because the concrete bottom is shredding your soaked-through soles. When I was able to pull the vegetation from my eyes and face, I realized I was still very much alone in the pool, as bipeds go, anyway. I found it more than strange that the forty-inch-high, four-millimeter-thick, vinyl pool wall had been enough of a barrier to confound the beasts.

  There were zombies afoot, of that, there was no doubt, but they weren’t paying any attention to me. I was like that weird kid in class that constantly keeps sticking a hand down the back of his pants every time he farts so he could catch a whiff of what he was delivering unto the world. What? You didn’t have that kid? Lucky you. Because the wet gas our kid pressed from his bowels smelled something like old road kill blended with garlic and mildew. He was a strange one. I think I remember hearing that he’d become an IRS agent; seemed to suit his particular talent. Of all the pencils and pens I’d borrowed during my high school career, I made absolutely sure not to use one of his. Even got a zero on a surprise quiz rather than use the infected writing
instrument he had attempted to hand me. I swear it walked off my desk under its own power.

  Weird, the gopher holes the mind travels down at any given time. I spun slowly, taking stock of my situation. The zombies were everywhere, yet none were looking directly at me, they were much more interested in the house, where I could now hear multiple people screaming my name. How in the hell did I respond, without giving myself away? I realized I was in a delicate predicament. If I responded and the zombies discovered me, I wasn’t going to get too far with this busted ankle. But if I didn’t say something, it was good odds someone was going to risk a rescue, and I could not afford for that to happen. Luckily, I was spared from having to do anything at all on my own. Winters and Justin emerged onto the roof; they were frantically looking around. I wanted to shout “here I am,” to wave, something that would garner their attention and allay, at least, my son’s fear. I’m sure Winters would have been just fine if I’d disappeared off the face of the earth.

  “Dad-is that you!?” Justin yelled. He was shielding his eyes and looking directly at me. He couldn’t have seen much in the murk of the pool; my head and shoulders were covered in the floating filth and gave me a pretty good camouflage effect. He was moving closer, coming down sideways along the dangerous slope of the roof. I slowly raised a hand to the halt position.

  “You alright?!” he yelled.

  I couldn’t say anything but the zombies were sure getting interested in his voice, and also in the fact that he was pointing at something–that something being me. Unlike most dogs, zombies seemed to understand the concept of spotting something with a finger. It was Winters who, thankfully, put all of this together and pushed Justin’s hand down when he saw the zombies looking around to see what the food on the roof was looking at. Winters turned about ninety degrees so he wasn’t even peering my way.

  “Going to assume you’re more or less okay, Talbot, and that somehow that cesspool you are hiding in is masking you from the zees. Hopefully, they’ll leave your area, but you can’t stay in there all night. It’s going to be cold–you could die from exposure. If you want to fight it out, shoot two quick rounds and we will do our best to give you the hole you need to run.”

  I silently thanked him.

  Justin turned in the same direction as Winters, though he was having a much more difficult time not looking back at me. “Everyone here is fine, dad. We…I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I said, no more than a hush of air escaping my lips.

  They came out and checked on me periodically. I was still there, and still couldn’t do much of anything, although my ankle had begun to knit itself together. That hurt like hell, but what was really becoming troublesome was the cold. It was a decent autumn day out, somewhere in the mid-sixties, if I had to take a guess, actually a beautiful day as far as that goes, but not exactly what we up here call swimming weather. And with night approaching, I had to think it was going to drop at least into the forties. Survivable outside, even without a jacket. But when every part of me was exposed to the cold, no way to get dry, so completely miserable, and injured, I would be in very real danger of dying from hypothermia. The zombies weren’t attacking; in fact, they weren’t even actively looking for me. I might as well have dropped off a cliff. Unfortunately, they also weren’t leaving, like they had some legacy memory that something good used to be here and they wanted to bask in the remembrance. The sun had just begun to set when the first of a violent series of shivers wracked my entire body. I did not know that toes could be made to shake, but I knew they could cramp. Had to add that to my list of complaints.

  There was a good chance by tomorrow morning my vampire virus-infused body would be able to repair the break. The problem was the human casing I was in being able to make it through the night. It might be a faster healing process if I wasn’t also attempting to fend off freezing to death. I had to clamp a hand over my mouth when my teeth chattered loudly from a body twisting spasm. I needed to send my mind away and let my body deal as best it could, so I found a gopher hole. I was ten the first time I saw a ghost; not the last time, not by a long shot, but definitely the first–and you know what they say about your first: it’s terrifying and you never forget it. Yeah…I was more relaxed already. That’s the way you start a side story, a way to distract you from what is actually happening; you remember the first time you were truly terrified.

  We had just moved from Boston proper to a sleepy little suburb called Walpole. I knew no one; I hung out with no one, and maybe that is who came to hang out with me. I was feeling pretty pissed off at life when I left the house, well, actually pissed off that my parents had put me in this position in life. My mother had tasked me with a list of chores longer than my arm. I walked into the garage, past the stack of boxes she wanted me to bring into the house. I walked past her car, loaded down with all manner of cleaning supplies, down the driveway, onto the roadway and hooked a left.

  I had no idea where I was going, but anything beat what my day was going to entail if I stayed home. Sure, there was a piper that was going to need to be paid for my transgression, but for good or bad, I never really gave a shit about that future piper; he was always kind of a bitch. Well, that’s sort of a lie, and even if I’m relating a story just to keep from freezing to death, I should, at least, attempt a truthful telling. I didn’t dismiss Future Piper because he was a little bitch; I didn’t give a shit about Future Piper because he literally did not exist in my present tense mind. He was not born yet, I couldn’t see him standing in front of me, so therefore he had absolutely no bearing on my life whatsoever. In my broken head, there was no room to entertain thoughts of consequences. Wait…that makes me sound like a sociopath. Was it apathy, then? Was I apathetic to ramifications? Maybe even back then I knew I could easily be dead before they or any form of Karma caught up with me, but I’m pretty sure it was just a case of “who gives a fuck,” the textbook definition of apathy. I’m sure there’s a fifteen-hundred-page psychiatric book that discusses this in depth; no need for me to go through it.

  I hooked another left when I got to the end of the next street, I think I heard my mother call out for me a couple of times as I increased my pace. I didn’t know it then, but I was heading toward Indian Hill–not the hill proper, but the far-left side, which was dominated by streams, bogs, and heavy woods–pretty much the ideal setting for all things creepy. I was on a side street in Walpole, which basically means I was alone. In Boston, a “side street” was where you got your tattoos and really good pizza. Here, it was empty. So, I took a hard turn into the woods. No reason why I chose to verge at this particular spot; it was visually the same as the entire wood-lined roadway. There was no path, no break in the fauna, no blazed trail to let me believe walking through here would be easier than any other place–this was just where it was decided that I should turn in. Sometimes there is not an explanation. Remember those words; I’ll be using that exact same phrase a little later in this narrative, but the next time, they will be a lot chillier. Whether it was in my mind or was an actual phenomenon, the temperature was much cooler when I went into the woods. Had to have been a balmy 85-ish on the road, and I realized the canopy the trees made and the nearness to water would have a cooling effect, but I could see my breath. That seemed excessive. The niggling in the back of my skull didn’t start for a few hundred yards. The pines had given way to white birch, which always make a normal woodland seem ethereal or at least strange. They have a subtle glow to them that makes everything around them appear blanched. Even as chills ran up and down my forearms I walked forward like I wore blinders, lost in my own thoughts, not taking in the scenario around me.

  An icy finger scratched its way from my lower back up my spine and circled the top of my head. I had to stop right where I was and look around. I no longer felt as if I were alone, and not in a good way. It was that overwhelming feeling that I was being watched. I did a slow spin and scanned those trees, peering hard at all of them. I didn’t see anything, but the feeling i
ntensified so much so that I was thinking now might be a good time to vacate the area and maybe go to a less creepy place. The problem was, the automated guidance system I had employed to get here had suddenly gone on the fritz. I’d turned myself around. Now, I wasn’t in any true danger of being lost in the woods of Walpole, but when you want to leave somewhere quick and don’t know which way to go, well that can be terrifying; it’s easy to succumb to panic. Everywhere I looked was the same, an endless line of trees, no path, no vista, no big rocks I could have used to mark the land. I walked a little longer hoping I was heading in a direction out, and I did my best not to constantly keep looking over my shoulder to see if I was being followed. I didn’t want whoever it was to know I knew, or that I was lost.

  For a while I was watching where my feet were going, doing my best to avoid rocks and branches. To this day I wonder why I looked up when I did, and I permanently regret that decision. There she was, ten feet up in the air, her head hanging askew. If I’d dared to approach, I could have reached up and touched the bottom of her dangling, bare feet–though I had no such desire. She was not some wisp of smoke, an ethereal mist; no, she appeared as real and solid as the tree she was hanging from, though I could not see the rope that kept her tethered there. She seemed a few years older than me, fifteen, maybe sixteen, blonde hair. She might have been pretty were it not for her bulging eyes, swollen, protruding tongue, and blue face. She was dead, and had been for a while.