by Mark Tufo
“I’m listening,” I choked out through the curtain of carcinogens.
“If you can find a hardware store, we’re going to need some tools.”
I drove back by the Big 5. If I remembered correctly, I had seen a Home Depot somewhere in the vicinity, I hadn’t really acknowledged it then, as I wasn’t planning on building a catapult at the time. “Hey, you’re not planning on making a trebuchet, are you?”
“A what?”
“A catapult-looking thingie.”
“I should have sat in the back with the other two,” Brian complained.
Paul had his sweater up over his nose, and his eyes were bloodshot. “Shit, Deneaux, could you lighten up a little on the cigarettes? I can barely breathe.”
“That’s the problem with you young ones today, no longevity. You are like all the products of your time, you’re not built to last like us old timers are. Probably would have asked for your HR generalist before you landed on the beaches in Normandy. We weren’t called the greatest generation for nothing.”
I almost put the truck up on two wheels when I realized I was just about to miss the entrance to the giant, box hardware store.
“Talbot, you just about made me fall out!” I heard BT yell.
I waved my apology to him, I was beginning to pass out from the oxygen loss. Brian, Paul and I raced to be the first to spill out of the cab. I think Brian won, but it was a virtual three-way tie without replay.
“How much room you got back there?” Paul asked after his coughing fit was through.
“Enough,” BT answered in sympathy.
“What are we doing here?” Gary asked.
“Brian has a plan,” I told him.
“Okay just so we’re clear. All you military types don’t think alike, right? I mean when he says he has a plan, it doesn’t involve some crazy stuff, right?” BT asked.
“Hell if I know. He didn’t tell me. Let’s lock and load insofar as we can,” I told the group.
Mrs. Deneaux came out and rubbed her half-smoked butt on the side of the truck so that she could smoke it later. “Oh come on,” she said to me when she saw me watching her in amazement. “You’ve already beat this truck into submission. Your brother won’t even notice this,” she said, pointing to the new, black burn mark.
“You have like five thousand cigarettes; why are you saving that one?” Gary asked.
“I plan on smoking every last one of them,” she cackled.
“Yeah, and most likely in the next few hours,” I answered. “Alright, let’s keep our eyes open for any of the squatters.” That’s what we were calling the zombies in the sleeping packs. “Any of those and we’re out of here, no matter if you got what you need or not, Brian.”
“Understood,” he said, nodding his head tensely.
I went through the door first, feeling totally inadequate with my .22 rifle. I had left the shotgun in the truck. It had some damage and until I could ascertain if it worked, I wasn’t going to risk our lives with it. “This sucks,” I mumbled.
“You say something, hoss?” Brian asked as he came up on my left flank.
“Just wishing I had something a little more potent than this pea shooter,” I told him.
“Bet that’s what you’re wife says,” he said. He stopped. “Sorry man, battlefield humor, helps ease the tension.”
“Not for me,” I said and he laughed. “Wow,” I said softly, the store didn’t look like it had even opened for business yet. It was virtually picked clean, except for a few scraps of lumber, haphazardly scattered on the floor. “Is this worth it?” I asked Brian.
“Maybe. What I’m looking for wouldn’t garner much attention. I wouldn’t think.”
“Alright lead on.” The five of us stayed in a tight-knit group, keeping eyes on every angle of approach. The stench of death was present, but it was impossible to distinguish if it was from dead people or walking dead people. Funny, but now I was wishing Deneaux was smoking to quench some of the stench.
We started to head down an aisle, but I didn’t like the idea of us being this tightly grouped, I was envisioning zombies flooding in from both ends. “Hold on,” I told the group. “Let’s do some reconnoitering. Gary, could you go up to the end of the aisle and make sure we’re not going to meet anyone we wouldn’t want to?”
“Is this about that time I told Mom when you snuck out of the house?”
“That was you?” She always told me that she had gotten up in the middle of the night because the dog had barked. “I got grounded for a month because of you?”
“Well what the hell were you thinking, leaving your bedroom window open in November?”
“I needed to get back into the house, didn’t I?”
“Well, how would I know you snuck out? Mom was up, getting a glass of water in the kitchen, I told her your bedroom window was open.”
“Do you have any idea how much she scared me when I got back in and turned on the light and she was sitting at my desk?”
“Oh I bet that was pretty scary,” Gary said empathizing with me.
“If I was any older, I probably would have had a heart attack.”
“If you were any older you wouldn’t have had to sneak out.”
“Boys,” Mrs. Deneaux said. “This is really fascinating, but I have a cigarette with my lip marks on it that I’m dying to get back to.”
The thought of anything with Deneaux’s lip marks on it gave me the shudders, apparently Gary too because he went to the end of the aisle without any further delay.
“Nothing up here!” he yelled.
“I thought you said he was in the military?” Brian asked.
“Air Force,” I told him.
“Oh,” Brian answered.
“BT? Can you, Paul and D stay here?”
“You got it, Mike, but this place does not feel right. I think we need to get going sooner, rather than later.”
“Understood, we’ll make this quick.”
“What could possibly make such a strapping young man as yourself afraid?” Mrs. Deneaux asked BT.
“You, for starters,” he answered, looking over her head for any signs of trouble.
“I’m going outside to finish my cigarette.”
“Shit,” Brian murmured as we looked in the tool section.
“What are you looking for? I can help,” I told him.
“Bolt cutters,” he told me almost simultaneously with Gary’s words.
“Movement!” Gary shouted.
“I am so sick of zombies,” I said aloud, but not really directed to Brian. My next sentence was, though. “You want to hear something sick?” I asked him.
“Not really, I’d like to get the bolt cutters and get the hell out of here.”
I ignored his entreaty completely. “I secretly wished something like this would happen. Yeah.” I continued when he looked over at me strangely. “I was sick of my boring ass life and my shitty job. It all seemed so pointless back then. I went to work, came home, ate dinner, said about five words to each of my kids, ten to my wife, went to bed, and then did the same thing the very next day. I mean, I don’t know if I was exactly thinking of a zombie invasion. A potential alien takeover or perhaps Chinese troops making a beach head in California would have worked just as well. I don’t know. I really didn’t care what the calamity was as long as my family was safe and I got out of my rut.”
“Couldn’t you have maybe hoped to win the lottery?” Brian asked me as he turned over a tool box laying on the floor.
“Maybe, but that seemed so farfetched.”
“More so than the world being overwrought with zombies and aliens?”
I noted that he didn’t discuss the Chinese because that was truly a potential threat. Hadn’t thought much about China since this crap started, but they must have close to a billion zombies over there by now. That was a mind-boggling number. I shrugged my shoulders.
“Two maybe three somethings coming this way, still can’t tell what they are though!” Gary shou
ted. He was backing down the aisle towards us.
“Probably safe to say if they aren’t talking, we know what we’re dealing with,” Paul answered as he went back to the front door to make sure our avenue of retreat wasn’t sealed off.
A shot fired from the top of our aisle.
“Did you get it?” I asked Gary as he came back to us.
“No, I was firing a warning shot.”
“Um, Gary we talked about this. Zombies don’t traditionally care about those kinds of things.”
“I wasn’t sure, I couldn’t see them through the aisles. You sure Glenn didn’t just maybe drop you out of the ranger station window that day at Blue Hills?”
I got the shivers just thinking about it. “There they are,” I said flatly, pointing to three of the mottliest crew of Home Depot workers to ever shamble along. They were a mess--torn, blood-stained clothes, at least two had suffered some sort of gunfire damage. The third, an old man of about eighty, looked like he had a foot and a half in the grave before this started. Surprisingly, the only things that were relatively intact on any of them were their bright orange aprons. “You can ask them if they’ve seen any bolt cutters,” I told Brian.
He looked over to the zombies and then at me. “I wonder if I can still catch up with Alex. He seemed to have his shit together.”
“Only if you take Deneaux,” I told him as I put my pop gun to my shoulder.
“Fine, I’ll stay,” he said as he began to look with a little more fervor through the strewn tools.
“Throwing screwdrivers would be more effective,” I said prophetically as I pulled the trigger. The lead zombie paused for a fraction of a second as it absorbed the impact and then began its forward progress again. “Are you kidding me?”
“It looks like it wrapped right around its skull,” Gary said, looking over my shoulder.
“Do not tell me this is a new version of zombie,” I said, eyeing the zombie for any sign of it stopping.
“What do you mean?” Gary asked.
“Could they be growing thicker skulls as protection?”
“That’s impossible,” Brian said. “That kind of adaptation would take thousands of years. AHA!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Not the biggest pair, but they’ll do.”
“That’s what she said,” I said, just because that’s what men do.
“Bathroom humor, Mike? Here? Mom would be so proud.”
“Sorry, it’s who I am. And anyway, he started it.”
“I’ve got what I need. Let’s get out of here,” Brian said, holding the bolt cutters up and heading quickly for the exit.
I placed a well aimed .22 center mast on the zombie’s forehead. His head snapped back a bit, I saw the gleam of white bone which became immediately coated with a brackish gel that looked a lot like congealed blood. The third bullet finally pierced through and he stopped cold. “You planning on shooting?” I asked Gary as my rifle jammed.
“I was going to save my ammo,” he told me matter-of-factly. “What’s the matter? You’re doing fine.”
“I have a jam.”
“Well, fix it. They’re deaders anyway…”
I looked up. The two shamblers on the left had been playing possum and were coming full tilt. Well, one of them was anyway. The old man was trying to get his giddy-up going, but that passed him by two decades ago.
The first zombie plowed into me. I was barely able to put my rifle up in time to keep him from biting any part of me off. “Shoot him!” I yelled.
“You guys are all entangled. I can’t,” Gary said in alarm.
“A bunch coming for the doors!” Paul yelled.
The zombie was an inch from my face, his breath was swoon-worthy, but I didn’t have the time for my inner diva to make a show. Its hands were making a clutch for the rifle. I simultaneously pushed him away with the rifle and let go. He could have the jammed piece of shit. I rolled to my right, a Philips screwdriver puncturing my side. The smell of the fresh blood got the zombie moving frantically. He let the gun go, his gray filmy eyes fixed on mine. I never took my eyes off him as my hands reached around the tools, looking for something zombie killing-worthy. I was having no luck as I first came across a rubber mallet and then a hacksaw. “Are you kidding me, God?” I shouted. And maybe he was, but then he guided me to a short-handled tool of some sort. I couldn’t tell what was on the end, but it had heft, and right now, I could deal with some blunt force trauma. The zombie had pulled himself closer, and I rolled onto my left hip and swung whatever the hell I had in my right arm as hard as I could. The safety-coated hand axe shone dully as it arced down and into the side of its head. My arm shivered from the impact, but the zombie seemed momentarily stunned. I kept rearing back and used as much leverage as I could, bringing my body up and slamming down with as much force as I could muster on each subsequent hit. I could hear his skull splinter with the first two hits, and the third finally broke through. My reward was a huge squirt of his creamy insides. I was repulsed as liquefied gray matter spilled forth. My feet were barely able to gain traction as I pushed away from the scene. Small white maggots wriggled around in the goop for a few seconds before becoming still. I might have decided to get a closer look, but Gary took this moment to put a bullet in its head.
“Little late to the dance, aren’t you?” I asked him. He put his hand out to help me up.
“Had to get rid of Papa Smurf and you looked like you were alright.”
“Kind of fits him, doesn’t it?” And it did. The old man had a white beard, was older than most craters, not to mention he had a significant blue hue to him.
“You might want to take the rubber off your axe,” Gary said as we moved back down the aisle to the doorway.
I grabbed a screwdriver and pushed the hair and bone covered material from the blade. “I wish it had a longer handle.”
“I wish it fired rounds,” Gary added.
“Well, that too.”
Paul was keeping the zombies at bay, more from the smoke screen his shots were producing than actually making a dent in their numbers. BT was down to a broom handle and was pushing the closest zombies away with it. He kept sticking it in their faces and sending them skidding backwards. They didn’t get the concept to grab the stick. Their arms were uselessly outstretched, trying to get a hold of their potential food.
“Mike! This is fun and all,” BT said with some effort. “But I really think we should get going.” A couple of zombies jostled into the broom handle, dislodging it from BT’s hands.
We had a window of escape, but it was starting to look like one of those fantastic, heavy-metal-doors-coming-to-a-close, Indiana Jones kind of escape.
And then Dirty Fucking Harry saved the day. Well, in this case, I guess it was Harriet. Mrs. Deneaux came in the front door, cigarette in mouth, cloud of smoke encircling her head, and one eye squinted. She took a quick assessment of the situation and flew through her magazine of rounds. Zombie heads whipped back before their bodies followed. Chunks of hairy, matted bone flew through the air. Eleven zombies dropped. What was going to be a narrow escape was now something we could drive a semi through.
“Thank you,” I told her breathlessly as we got to the door.
“If I were fifty years older, I’d marry you,” Gary said, kissing her on the cheek.
“I knew it!” BT shouted. “All white women are crazy!”
Mrs. Deneaux cackled loudly as we mostly carried her to the truck.
“I told you!” Paul said as we all got back in the truck.
“What happened?” Brian asked.
“Mrs. Deneaux is what happened!” I shouted. “She just might be the baddest ass person on the planet right now!”
Brian got the truck moving as a stream of zombies came flooding through the door. “Horrible customer service,” he remarked as we pulled out of the parking lot.
“Not bad,” I told him as I clapped him on the shoulder. My heart rate was finally coming down to something approaching “galloping horse.” A few more minute
s, and maybe I’d get it to “hummingbird” status.
“Now what?” Gary asked.
“We find a storage locker facility,” Brian answered.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Storage lockers, I’m telling you they’re gold mines. My cousin does it for a living.”
“Does what, exactly?” I asked, not understanding what the hell he was talking about.
“He used to buy abandoned storage lockers and sell the contents for huge bucks.”
“Great, but I don’t think we really need an old record collection or furniture for that matter,” I told him, more than a little pissed that we had all just risked our lives for this half-assed idea.
“No, Mike, he said he always comes across guns when he does these.”
“Come on, who sticks guns in a storage locker?” I asked. It sounded like the most insane thing I’d ever heard. Sometimes I hated having my rifles in a safe at my own home because that would delay me getting to them. How much of a pain-in-the-ass would it be to tell the home invaders at your house to hold off while you put your shoes on and drive down to the storage facility to retrieve your weapons. I’m sure they’d be super understanding.
“I don’t know. Folks who only want guns for hunting season, or relatives who have passed and the kids stick everything in storage until they can go through it.”
“Or a sporting goods store that’s gone under,” Gary added.
“Maybe we’ll find Harry Potter’s magic wand too.” I said. “I don’t think the risk was worth the return, Brian,” I said, more than a little miffed.
“What do we have to lose?” he replied. “We either find something and punch Eliza in the mouth or we don’t and scramble to catch up with the others.
“Fair enough,” I relented, but I was far from placated. I did not want to go running into the night again with my tail between my legs.
Chapter Five – Mike Journal Entry 4
I found the rows of orange-colored garage doors to be more than a little unsettling. I couldn’t put my finger on it, the uniformity? Great. Was I developing a new phobia? Just what I needed. I did not like the fact that it felt like we were in an alleyway with limited avenues for escape, but I had to admit the zombie apocalypse had passed right by this place.