by William Bebb
CHAPTER 2
Grandpa & Billy
“Grandpa, look, there's a truck over there!” A little boy with blond hair that hadn't been combed for several days shouted.
The old man opened his eyes instantly. Half awake, he climbed out of his recliner and used his cane to shuffle as fast as he could over to the window. He stood behind the boy patting him on the shoulder and absently ruffled his blond hair. “So we've been rescued, have we?” He asked, reaching for his binoculars and peering in the direction the boy pointed. He spotted a large truck parked by the old laundry building. It was surrounded by a substantial crowd of undead and insane people. Most of them were beating and pressing on the doorway which seemed to be blocked by something.
Whoever was in the truck must now be in the building or dead, he theorized.
The living room of his trailer was mostly lit by sunlight shining through the windows, supplemented by a few fruit and flower scented candles his wife had bought years before. The aroma was bitter sweet as it reminded him of his lifelong love who had passed away almost fifteen years earlier. The candles always made him miss her when they were lit. Nonetheless, considering the foul stench that drifted through the open windows, he felt a few melancholy memories were worth the price of reducing or at least partially covering the foul stench of his putrescent neighbors.
In the murky light, the young boy's blue eyes appeared sunken and exhausted as he watched his grandfather stare across the trailer park. The boy had been going to the kitchen to get another glass of water and continue his so far fruitless search for the animal crackers his grandfather had hidden when he spotted the big truck that hadn't been there earlier. He looked at the old man leaning on his cane. The elderly man had shrunk over the decades of retirement until he was just barely a foot taller than his grandson. But, he was still the world’s greatest Grandpa in the boy's slightly biased opinion.
It wasn't often that his mom would drive all the way from Las Cruces to let him stay with him, but he loved it even if it was just for a few days. Sometimes she'd let him stay for a whole week. Whenever she asked if he wanted to visit, the boy was always happy about the prospect. His grandfather sometimes recounted cool gory stories about World War II and how people he actually knew died in a fascinating variety of ways.
One of Billy's favorite tales was how his grandfather's sergeant, “a real limp noodle” whatever that meant, had been run over by a Nazi tank from the feet up. It had been sort of like watching toothpaste when the tube is squeezed except it was the man’s mouth that first blood then internal organs squirted out of. Billy always remembered that description when he was about to brush his teeth. As he squeezed the toothpaste tube he'd make quiet screaming sounds and would always laugh when his mom asked why he did that. He loved the stories, but knew if she ever found out about them he'd probably never get to visit again. His mom was just weird that way.
“Does this mean we're going to get out of here now?” The boy asked, looking up with eyes filled with hope for the first time in three long days.
“I told you we would, didn't I, Billy Boy?” The old man whispered then coughed softly. He lowered the binoculars and patted the boy’s hair with his bony warm fingers that smelled of some kind of muscle ache cream. Staring at the distant truck, he sat down on one the kitchen chairs and absently chewed at his bottom lip.
“Can we go get ice cream and cake for my birthday now? I'll be ten years old and mom will be coming back to get me, right grandpa?”
Colonel William Lester, retired, only nodded and smiled at his grandson as he considered their situation. We've got three bullets, a pack and a half of cigarettes, and almost no food left. Can we wait until someone notices the missing truck driver? Can we wait until Cheryl comes to get Billy? Dare I let her drive into this mess?
Of course, if it hadn't been for her irrational and infuriating hatred of guns I could have taken care of this nightmare myself before it had come to this point.
She had laid an ultimatum on her elderly father when Billy had been outside playing with his poodle, Gretchen.
His whole frail body shook in barely contained rage as he remembered her, hands on big hips, looking down and lecturing him; her own father.
“Guns kill people, dad! I still can't believe that you gave him that damn BB rifle last summer, but get this straight- I will not let him stay here unless you put your guns in the trunk of my car. Get your shotgun and the rifle then you two can have a nice visit, and I won't be constantly worried about him while I'm at work all week.
You know how curious he is about guns, and you know it’s irresponsible to have him in a house full of dangerous weapons. How would you feel if he blew off his foot or, God forbid, killed himself while playing? Dad, you know how I feel about any guns in general and you're really too old to use yours anyway. You need to understand that I will not stand for you needlessly endangering my son. Now, march in there and bring them out- all of them!”
What else could he do?
He'd marched inside, cane in hand, and surrendered. He'd fought three long grueling years, in the deserts of North Africa, The Beaches of Normandy, even survived The Battle of the Bulge, and yet who finally made him surrender and give up his guns? It was Cheryl; his very own bleeding heart well meaning idiot of a daughter.
He'd managed to keep his grandson alive since his neighborhood somehow turned into a nightmare. But if not for his questionable memory they'd probably be dead or worse. When his daughter had seized his guns, he'd entirely forgotten about his old Colt .45 service pistol that was buried under old clothes in a steamer trunk.
He shuddered and shook his head feeling exhausted and sleepy, but didn't want to sleep anymore. His dreams had been made up entirely of horribly realistic nightmares since last Friday. They were always the same general scenario with only occasional slight variations. Unlike his usual dreams, which he normally forgot before he got up to brush his teeth, the recent nightmares seemed to have been branded into his waking thoughts. The visions were so real, vivid, horrible, and plausible that he could rarely spend an hour without the images replaying like daydreams- only they were more like day nightmares. He'd be thinking about nothing in particular when they would sneak in and hijack his conscious mind.
Billy would be playing and accidentally make a noise too loud, and they'd burst into the trailer. They'd push him aside and rip and tear at his young grandson. He'd be screaming, as they tore and bit him. And when they were done Billy would be dead and yet somehow not. He would come to his grandfather smiling. Then the boy he loved more than anyone else in the world would bite and tear his ancient feeling body to shreds.
“Grandpa, I'm hungry. Can I have some breakfast?” Billy asked, having lost interest in staring at the truck glittering in the early morning sunlight.
He nodded and went about getting them some oatmeal and a can of juice, while he continued thinking. Could it really have only been what... three or four days ago when all this started?
He remembered the memorial the neighbors held late Thursday night. Juan died while working at Beaumont Bio-Chemical Industries in town. From what little he learned, Juan died after being overcome by fumes and passing out inside one of the giant metal vats he cleaned. Some technician apparently thought it was ready for use again and switched on the chemical mixing storage tanks that fed into the vat Juan was in.
No one who worked with him was told what chemicals or other things he came into contact with- only that they should leave his body in the large black plastic tarp that had been duct taped shut. The company's private security agents ordered all employees at the accident site to leave while they dealt with the 'situation'. The factory supervisor, named Keck, paid off the other illegal immigrant workers that also lived in the trailer park. He gave them ten crisp new hundred dollar bills to keep the incident quiet and get rid of the body without calling the cops.
At least, that’s what Maria had told him.
The old man looked up toward Mrs. Remlap's house located on the
small hill about a mile and a half away and hoped that she made it there safely. While young enough to have been his own granddaughter, he was still a man and like all men appreciated a beautiful girl when he saw one.
Maria was born in Texas and came to the trailer park, along with her younger brother Miguel, a few years earlier. Blessed with the face of an angel, she had sparkling green eyes and long silky dark brown hair. She never told him her age, but he guessed she might be twenty-one at most. Being a man, he'd thought about her many times yet never in a serious way. The fantasies were just an occasional pointless pleasant daydream.
She left the previous night an hour after nightfall.
He remembered watching her run toward the distant house as their disturbing neighbors grunted, growled, and prowled about in the darkness.
She made him feel old and worthless when she left, yet he knew something had to be done and he couldn't do it.
He bent over and coughed as the water boiled atop the propane powered stove, and cursed himself for being so ancient and nearly helpless. Watching the pan of water boil, he poured the dry oatmeal out of little paper packets into two plastic bowls. He slipped on the oven mitt that had a smiling cartoon devil imprinted on it with the words 'Hot enough for ya?' before pouring the water into the bowls. He stirred the oatmeal for a few seconds and remembered how terrified Maria had been when she came over, early last Friday morning, half dragging Miguel who was dazed and confused.
It took several minutes to get her to stop crying and speaking rapidly in Spanish. He knew enough to know something really bad had happened, but that was all. Eventually she calmed enough to try and explain, in English, what was going on.
Nearly everyone had gotten very drunk, Thursday evening. Juan's body was removed from the heavy black plastic tarp as the men began to drink. They laid him outside on a picnic table which had been covered with a white sheet. She'd placed several lit votive candles all around his body.
The digging of a shallow grave was started earlier in the evening, but as more men started drinking it remained unfinished. She’d prayed and talked with Juan's little brother, Chico, for awhile then sent him to bed early because the men began to get drunk and into fights. One of them had stopped at a liquor store on the way back home and bought two cases of Tequila, “to send off Juan properly,” he said smiling foolishly.
She’d gone to bed just after Chico, and stayed up late saying prayers for Juan's soul before eventually falling asleep.
She awoke early Friday morning to the sounds of screams and gunshots. After making sure her bedroom door was locked, she quickly dressed and peeked out a window. Blood covered most of the white sheet on the empty picnic table while her friends and neighbors were running in all directions. A few men were using guns and knives, but the vast majority were hitting, clawing, and biting at each other.
She watched in shock as an old man screamed and hacked seemingly randomly at his neighbors with an old, rusty, blood stained, machete.
Next door, Juan's little brother Chico came out of his trailer. He looked on in bewilderment as the men wrestled, fought, bit, ran, and screamed all around him. The large group of blood splattered men bit and clawed at each other like a pack of wild rabid dogs. She'd once seen crazed dogs behaving the same way on the outskirts of a small town where she lived as a young girl.
Chico's expression was understandable horror at first as he stared at the bloody chaos, but it quickly changed to a look of pure wonder as he ran through the groups of men who seemed to have all gone insane.
She looked to where he was running to and screamed. It simply was not possible.
Juan was longer resting on the table as any respectable corpse should do. Instead, he was walking unsteadily, arms outstretched, toward his little brother.
She heard a shotgun blast and some pellets struck the window, and yet she could not look away as the brothers moved through the madness toward each other.
Juan was alive and yet, not really.
She saw his eyes were vacant and his clothes were soaked with blood. As he walked past her window she couldn't help noticing the huge, ragged, bloody holes on his back where his shirt had been shredded by bullets exposing bits of bone and torn meat underneath.
“Oh God,” she'd said to the old man between sobs while recounting the event, “Juan was dead, but was still moving.”
Chico ran and embraced his big brother, hugging him tight, as tears of joy flowed down his face.
She stayed at the window, unable to look away, as Juan bit into his little brother's neck and tore away a large strip of flesh. The boy screamed and pulled away as Juan chewed and swallowed his brother's flesh. Running for an old Chevy van, Chico weaved his way through several other men who were fighting as blood began to soak his shirt. Holding his bleeding neck with one hand, he climbed inside and managed to get the van started. The tires spun in the dust as he drove erratically toward the trailer park's exit.
Hoping she might catch him and get a ride away from the madness that had overtaken her neighbors, she ran to the back door. The van's brakes could be heard squealing momentarily followed by several loud crashes of metal.
The van sideswiped a car that was coming in from town and swerved into a wooden utility pole that ran alongside the road. The pole snapped and fell on the roof of the van, shattering the windshield and crushing part of its roof.
Maria ran out the back door just as the electricity blinked out. Running toward the wrecked cars she saw Juan and several others also heading in that direction. They were all bloody. Some were just grunting and moving slowly, but several were running very fast- screaming or making loud snarling noises as they hurried toward the wreck. With a burst of speed, inspired by genuine terror, she ran faster and managed to get to the cars first.
Maria found her brother Miguel in the station wagon's backseat and tried to shake him awake, while shouting to the other men to hurry and get out before they got there. One of the older men in the backseat got out and told her to go phone for help.
Looking over her shoulder, she saw him get out of the car and start walking toward Juan and the others asking, “What is happening?”
Gustav had come to America from El Salvador more than twenty years earlier, and not since his time spent with the Communist Guerillas had he seen so much blood. He helped plan and execute dozens of attacks against the government for the sake of the revolution.
The badly wounded and dazed men walking and running toward him did not frighten him. They were his friends and neighbors. As he approached them he only wondered, what had happened?
His good friend Loco Perro, aka Crazy Dog, was running toward him screaming. His amigo was always there when he needed someone to talk with, and Gustav held out his arms to his old friend. He heard the girl behind him yelling at the men to run, but knew women always overreacted when things get rough in life. It wasn't till Loco Perro leaped through the air and tackled him that he realized the girl hadn't been over reacting at all.
While Maria pulled the barely conscious Miguel out of the car, Gustav began to scream behind her. Not looking back, she yelled at the other men to get out of the car and run. She half carried, half dragged, Miguel to the silver trailer with the American flag outside as more screams and growls echoed behind her. She knew Colonel Lester would help.
With badly trembling hands, the old man set the steaming bowl of oatmeal in front of Billy and looked back at the truck in the distance. The temperature was already warming up so he made sure all the windows were open (hoping for an elusive breeze) and glanced at the thermometer hanging on the kitchen wall. It was eighty two degrees and it wasn't even 9 o'clock yet. There was a slight breeze coming from the west. It was hot but better than nothing.
He couldn't decide which he missed more- his guns or the electricity. Living in New Mexico in July with no air-conditioning could be every bit as deadly as the creatures wandering around his neighborhood. He'd seen proof of it more than a few times over the decades.
&
nbsp; He thought about all the people he'd known who died during heat waves since he and his wife settled there back in the early 1960’s. He guessed the number of deaths had to be somewhere near a hundred. Looking across the dusty street, he remembered when they found Kim Mendez's little girl back in the summer of 1982. She'd been the sweetest eight year old child. Every spring she'd sell cookies and later set up a lemonade stand in front of her trailer during the summer. He closed his eyes and could see her long light blonde hair, ever present smile, sparkling green eyes, and shuddered as he remembered the day she had turned up missing.
The lemonade stand was still in front of her parent’s trailer, but the pitcher was empty and paper cups were scattered around the yard and street as he walked over. Kim had been yelling for at least twenty minutes for her daughter to come home. She had a worry-filled look on her face as he walked over to find out what was going on.
“It's Sarah. I haven't seen her for hours. We came back from the grocery store around noon. Sarah had been selling lemonade all morning. She used up all the lemons and we went to the store to get more, but where is she now? Have you seen her?” Kim asked, looking around nervously.
“I haven't seen her since this morning when I bought two cups of lemonade. Did you look for her inside the trailer, everywhere?”
She gave a withering look that made him step back, then let loose a loud yell, “Sarah Dania Mendez! You come home right now!”
It wasn't as bad then as it is nowadays with perverts seemingly prowling every street corner. But after a while with the neighbors and their kids fruitlessly searching everywhere for the little girl, Kim finally phoned the police and her husband Jake.
As the sun began to set people started whispering, “Kidnapping” and deputies asked neighbors to let them search their trailers. Most readily agreed and those who didn't were silently considered possible suspects.
The retired Colonel Lester let the sheriff set up a command post in his trailer and offered to help in any way he could. She was a sweet girl who reminded him of his own daughter, Cheryl, when she’d been young. A quartet of bloodhounds eventually was brought in and began sniffing for any signs of the missing girl.
Jake asked Kim if there was any more lemonade still in the house, gesturing to the empty pitcher sitting on the small wooden table with the misspelled sign still taped to the front Lemonaids 25 cents a cup.
She gave him a look that strongly suggested she'd kill him for suggesting something so stupid if there weren't dozens of law enforcement officials nearby.
“It's not for me, honey. The police have been searching for hours and they’ve got to be getting thirsty,” Jake said defensively.
Kim picked up the pitcher and went in the trailer. She was only gone for a moment before she came back out again, still clutching the empty pitcher, and stared at her car parked in the driveway. She had the most horrible look on her face as she gazed at the car with impossibly wide open eyes.
Colonel Lester was talking with Jake when a bloodhound sniffed at the car and howled. The howl was loud, long, and felt mournful. But it was overpowered by Kim's scream as she ran to the trunk and unlocked it while still clutching the empty pitcher in her other hand.
Turning the flashlight he was holding, he saw Sarah huddled in the trunk with a bag of spilled lemons scattered around her body. He only had a second to glimpse her before the deputies pushed him back.
Colonel Lester had seen more than his share of dead people during his time in the military. He thought he'd seen the worst ways to die imaginable- Men blown quite literally to shreds of little more than strips of smoking flesh. Others were burned, stabbed, and maybe hundreds shot to death, yet none shocked him more than seeing Sarah.
Her skin was a dark mottled purple blue color and her open eyes were no longer green. They were a glazed over grayish white. It wasn't her face that still sometimes haunted his dreams, it was her small fingers. She must have tried clawing open the trunk.
Later, he heard through a neighbor that the police found scratches, scrapes, and long paint like smears of blood on the inside of the trunk lid. The same neighbor was good friends with one of the detectives who worked on the investigation. The official theory was that the girl had climbed into the trunk to retrieve the bag of lemons while her mother carried the other groceries into the trailer. As she climbed in, the trunk lid must have slammed shut- perhaps by a stray breeze. The lid probably knocked her temporarily unconscious.
Evidence found during the autopsy indicated she had received a concussion. How long she managed to stay alive after regaining consciousness was estimated to be no more than thirty minutes, due to lack of air coupled with the extreme heat.
Staring at the empty lot where their trailer used to be, the elderly man watched a few of his neighbors staggering around. Some were chasing after a few of the birds that had taken up residence in the valley since last Friday. He looked at his holstered Colt .45 semiautomatic strapped to his hip, with its last three bullets, and pushed back the thought that sometimes made him feel he'd gone insane.
If the undeniably berserk murderous people outside managed to break into the trailer he'd have no choice. He'd be forced to kill his own grandson.
He may have been old, but he was no old fool. After hearing Maria's account about everything that had happened and watching the men wandering, screaming, fighting, and prowling around for the last few days he knew what they were. As hard as it was for him to come to grips with, he knew they weren't just insane, homicidal, people- they were zombies or at least some of them were.
He trembled and took his hand off the pistol. The old man ate a spoonful of warm oatmeal and smiled at Billy.
He was horrified that the boy might somehow suspect that he was saving the last bullets for him. An uninvited image came to him as he swallowed, and he nearly choked. The vision of his nearly ten year old grandson with a bullet hole in his angelic face was so vivid and realistic he was afraid he might throw up.
“Are you alright, grandpa?” Billy asked from across the table.
“Fine as frog hair,” he lied, looking out the window as he sipped some water, again wishing he hadn't listened to Cheryl about the guns. If he hadn't found his old service pistol they would surely have been dead or undead days ago. If I just had more bullets for it, he thought bitterly, just a box of frigging bullets; I could sit here inside my trailer and put an end to this living nightmare within twenty, maybe thirty minutes.
He glanced over the darkened large wooden consoled television and saw some of the awards he'd earned for marksmanship hanging on the wall.
While it was true he hadn't entered a shooting contest since Ronald Reagan had served his first term, he practiced target shooting up until about ten years ago. He absently fiddled with the leather strap on the gun holster and his eyes drifted shut.
First, he'd tried calling the police, but as soon as he realized the power and phone lines were down he went and dug through his old steamer trunk. He hadn't been sure if he'd given his pistol to Cheryl as well. After a few frantic minutes of panic fueled searching, he found it tucked in its leather holster under some racy National Geographic magazines- he hadn't looked at for over a decade- and strapped it on. It felt heavier than he had remembered, yet it also felt very good and reassuring.
Maria had been jabbering rapidly in Spanish pointing out the window.
His eyesight hadn't improved with age, and he looked on the shelf where he usually kept his binoculars. They hadn't been there- right next to the porcelain figurines his wife had collected over their thirty years of marriage. Then he remembered Billy had been playing with them the night before. Quietly, he crept into the spare room and saw the boy was still asleep. But he quickly spotted the binoculars on his bedside table. Billy muttered in his sleep and he silently cursed Cheryl for having taken all his other rifles and guns.
When he got back to the living room the old man trained his binoculars on the front of the park. There were two cars smashed together, wit
h steam rising from one of them, and a broken utility pole atop a rusty cargo van. But he couldn't make sense of everything else he was seeing. It looked like there were people giving others CPR, but the people on the ground were struggling and trying to push off their rescuers. He remembered staring, still trying to comprehend what he was seeing, when Maria started to talk slowly. “They are monsters. Juan is a monster. Now the others are monsters. What can we do?”
Her brother Miguel woke up about that time and looked around in confusion. He asked what was going on.
She spoke rapidly in Spanish and Miguel listened for less than a minute before saying, “No” over and over while shaking his head. He was sweaty and from the look of him he'd been up all night working in one of the factories downtown- probably at the infamous Beaumont Bio-Chemical Industries.
He appeared genuinely embarrassed and apologetically said, “We go home now. I'm so sorry we bothered you, colonel.” Miguel stood and took Maria's hand. He tried to pull her toward the door, but she was in tears speaking faster and pointing to where the wrecked cars were.
“Listen Miguel, I think maybe you should go over first and see what’s going on. It’s probably nothing except a car wreck, but she seems pretty scared. She can stay here while you go check it out, if you want.” As he spoke she seized his hand and wouldn't let go. “I really think she wants to stay.”
Miguel shrugged and went to the door as Maria pleaded, “No, no, no,” and some other Spanish words the old man couldn't understand.
Miguel smiled down at her, and said, “Do not fear. I'll be right back.”
The colonel watched through his binoculars while she sat on the couch praying. She held her Crucifix and recited prayers quickly and fervently, as he observed Miguel walk toward the wrecked cars. The young man went quickly until he got within about a hundred feet, and then slowed considerably before eventually stopping.
Miguel scratched his head, turned and looked back at the trailer briefly, before bending over and picking up a big piece of wood. When he continued forward he was walking much slower, and holding the piece of wood like he was ready to hit someone.
But the old man couldn't see anyone moving toward Miguel.
He walked a few steps closer. Some of the men that had been kneeling on the ground by the bodies stood up and started running and screaming toward him.
Miguel was a smart young man and ran back to the trailer.
Colonel Lester looked at the old, badly rusted, almost comically inadequate, four foot high chain link fence that encircled his front yard. It was mainly bought so his poodle Gretchen could be let outside to do her 'business' as his wife Barbara used to say. Plus, the poor dog had been nearly blind and even older in dog years than he was. Gretchen also had a habit of wandering around the trailer park and getting herself lost. The fence wasn't even close to being the best barricade in the world, yet the zombies didn't seem smart enough to devise a way to climb over or break through it.
A couple of crazed men had been running after Miguel and inadvertently flipped over it into his yard. Under other circumstances he would have laughed as they somersaulted over the fence, but their growls and screams kept it from being even slightly funny.
When the men who tumbled over the fence jumped up and ran toward him he fired twice. With the first two shots he had aimed center mass and hit them, but they merely staggered back for a second and then kept coming. The next two shots took them down permanently as he aimed for their heads.
Miguel made it back and ran through the open gate in the fence. He was pursued by several other fast moving men. As he ran into the yard holding a broken baseball bat, Gretchen ran out of the trailer barking ferociously and distracted the pursuers who had come through the gate before Miguel had a chance to shut it.
The old man looked out the window at his beloved Gretchen's remains, which consisted of just a few tufts of blindingly white fur. It was blown sluggishly in the slight early morning breeze. She must have been the stupidest dog in the world. But she probably saved Miguel's life, he thought, sadly. She had gone outside barking and running circles around the other zombies as they got closer.
The few men who had made it into the yard were confused and distracted by the dog while Miguel dispatched one with a tremendous swing of the broken baseball bat- shattering its skull in a spray of blood, bones, and brains.
He'd almost shot the man that was tearing his dog to pieces. But many others were seemingly attracted by the dog's howls of agony. It was perhaps the hardest thing in his life for the old man to not shoot them. But he knew there were just a precious few bullets left.
The dog’s howls and cries still echoed in his ears as he suspected they would until the day he died. He'd kept a wary eye on Gretchen’s remains out of fear she might come back from the dead too. Thankfully, what was left of her body just rotted in the sand and dirt after the others devoured the rest of her.
They'd been staying quiet and hadn’t gone outside at all for the last few days. It had been hard on both of them, but for his grandson it had been sheer agony. In addition to everything else, Billy was almost ten years old which is a hard age to remember to be quiet under the best of circumstances. But when you're stuck in a trailer with nothing to do except sweat and listen to real life monsters prowling around outside, it was nothing less than torture.
He'd tried every trick he could think of to keep the boy's spirits up- even filling the bathtub with cool water and letting him sit in it during the hottest part of the day. He tried telling him some of his war stories about how hot it was in North Africa during the war. “And we don't even have people shooting at us here.” He'd tried joking with Billy.
The boy wasn't amused. All he knew for certain was that there were bad guys outside and that he and his grandpa had to stay inside all day, every day, and be extra quiet.
The old man was worried about his grandson. He wondered if he was going to be mentally alright even if they were eventually rescued. Sometimes the boy would just stare out the window for hours watching the undead.
Billy scared him the day before when he started laughing and pointing to where a man with a missing arm and several missing fingers on his remaining hand chased after a vulture that had a broken wing.
It reminded the colonel a little of when he was a boy and visited his aunt and uncle's farm in Kansas. He always volunteered to help with dinner if chicken was on the evening menu. Back then there were no corner supermarkets. If you wanted chicken for dinner you had to chop its head off with a hatchet.
His aunt would always watch to make sure he didn't accidentally hack off his fingers or a hand.
Sometimes, after he made the cut, the headless bird would start to run around the barnyard. When that happened, she would always scream and flee back into the house while he laughed like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen- which it was.
Billy finished his oatmeal and was playing with his blocks on the kitchen table.
His grandfather thought this was fine to do as long as he didn’t build a tower of blocks that would crash down and inevitably attract attention from outside. He looked at the boy as he played with his blocks.
He built a house with a ring of blocks around it and placed a little plastic soldier figure on top of the blocks. It was one of those green plastic army men aiming forward with a rifle with the soldier down on one knee.
Billy then placed several plastic Indian figures around the ring of blocks and started scooting them slowly around them, making soft grunting noises. Then he had the Indian figures push through the ring of blocks and pointed the army man at each of them in turn.
Billy whispered, “Pow, pow, pow,” and with each POW he thumped one of the Indians over with his fingertip.
Colonel William Lester, retired, recipient of the Bronze Star, survivor of three years of active duty fighting to put an end to the plans of the Third Reich, father of three grown children and five grandchildren, turned his head away before his youngest grandson could see the
tears of frustration and self loathing trickling down his face.