by Mark Tufo
I popped off a few rounds, reached down and grabbed BT’s lost magazine. He thanked me with his eyes as I placed his magazine in. We were both up and shooting. The distraction was giving us a little breathing room. Damn near jumped out of my socks when I heard the large ‘blat’ of the truck horn. Knowing Gary, he’d super-charged it so that it sounded more like something a five hundred ton train would be making. I saw a giant shower of sparks as the truck hit a small dip in the parking lot. The plow dug into the soft pavement and sent a plume of pebbles into the air.
The truck smashed into the now Talbot-vacated gate. The chain held, the fence did not. At least a thirty-foot of section folded down like a paper airplane. Scores of smelly bastards were getting the Play-Doh treatment as their bodies were being shoved through four-inch squares. Zombie spaghetti sounded like about the worst thing ever. Meatballs would forever take on a new meaning. The plow was bouncing around like Gary had outfitted it with hydraulics; which wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities. Some zombies began to scatter, others were a little slower on the uptake as the giant steel blade bore down on them, and then there were still the ones that were coming towards BT and me.
It wouldn’t do any good to get rescued if we were dead. Gary was like that mechanical arm that comes down to clean out the pins while you’re bowling. Zombies were being hurtled into space, dragged under the blade or run over, any of which caused instantaneous visual horrors. I wasn’t sure how the timing of this was going to work. Gary at his present speed and direction was just as likely to hit us as the zombies he was saving us from. We were pinned down and there were not a whole bunch of avenues for us to escape.
Then I saw the ladder attached to the side of the truck. I started to do the damned salvation-math. It had all sorts of awesome variables like, Gary’s speed, amount of zombies between us and the rungs, plus BT’s ability to be able to hold onto a moving ladder. Fun shit like that.
There was a layer of only four or five deep of zombies between Gary and us when I felt BT’s rifle graze the top of my head at top speed. If I had an inch more of height, or his massive arms had dipped just a fraction, he would have sent the top of my head into the cheap seats. I turned just in time to see a zombie in the midst of a heels-over-head situation; its face caved in. BT had struck it so hard that it literally left its feet. Well, that answered the ‘strong enough to hold the ladder’ factor.
“Holy shit. Thanks, man,” I told him.
It was one of the earlier zombies taking one last final shot in the pursuit of food. And it had almost worked. How BT had seen it I didn’t know. Maybe he had thought of something I’d done to him previously and was actually gunning for me but had gone high and I’d just been fortuitous. Highly coincidental, granted, but still possible. Gary was creating a clearing big enough for a truck to drive through (see how I did that?). Although he had zombies to both sides and the rear, we only needed to be concerned with the side he was planning on driving by us.
I pointed to the approaching ladder.
“I’ve got damn eyes,” BT told me.
“And an attitude apparently.”
“You say something?” he asked gruffly.
“Just get on the stupid ladder.”
Gary was fast approaching, and we’d done a decent job of clearing a path, although it was much like digging sand. Every time we took some out, more would fill in from the sides. I made a move towards BT, my hand extended, I was going to give him a little extra assistance up.
“You touch me and I’ll scream rape,” BT said.
“Well at least you’re feeling better.”
Gary was going about ten miles an hour, which sounds slow enough, but when you’re standing still and have to hop on, it’s fairly intimidating. BT flipped his rifle over his shoulder and reached out with his right hand. I turned and started running in the direction the plow was going. I couldn’t get on until BT had moved his bulk up far enough to give me room to join him.
“Mike!” BT yelled.
It was a tone I’d never heard from him before. I was about even with the plow blade when I turned. BT’s face had taken on an ashen quality. I was wondering if he was being hit again with the zombie cramp. It was then I noticed his right leg was off the ladder. A zombie had grabbed hold, which normally wouldn’t have been an issue for BT, but two other zombies had also played piggy back with the first one. He literally had three zombies dragging on him and more trying to get in position to add their own anchorage. BT had wrapped his arm around the ladder step so that his armpit was firmly lodged, but I could see the strain in his face as he tried to shake his leg free of the huge parasites.
“Speed up, Gary!” I shouted. He was looking in the side-view mirror at BT.
A billow of diesel exhaust blossomed out of the stack behind the cab. I ran a little further ahead while I had the chance, swung the rifle onto my back and grabbed my machete.
“Again with the damn machete,” I said as I turned back around. “Do not move!” I yelled to BT.
It would not have done any good if he started kicking out his leg and I slammed my blade into his thigh. The first zombie that had latched onto him was being dragged on his knees. It hurt me to even think about his kneecaps being sanded down on the ground like they were, especially with the other two hangers-on.
The timing had to be almost perfect. I took a step, already the cab was past, I was mid-stride with my next step and had pulled my arm back as far as I could. I was in full swing as my second stride hit the ground. The machete caught the zombie midway in the back. I heard its back break as the blade cut deep. The knife was ripped from my hand, but I’d gone deep enough, the added weight on the back of that zombie pulled him neatly in two. Okay, neatly might be a bit of a gross exaggeration. I guess as neatly as a human body can be severed. Every internal organ spilled to the ground, it looked like a dog food processing truck had rolled over.
BT was able to pull his leg up as the two other zombies rolled away when their ride ditched them. It was two more strides before I could stop my forward momentum. Now I was the one that had a problem. I was running headlong into the zombies and my ride was taking off the other way, plus I had lost the knife I hated using so much. I sure would have loved to use it now. I didn’t have the room or the time to turn back around, and getting to my rifle was out of the question.
It was time to play unpadded football. I tucked my head in and lowered my shoulder. I caught the first one in the chin with the point of my shoulder. I heard his teeth shatter right after he severed his tongue off. The flap of meat smacked wetly against my forearm.
I somewhat had the element of surprise as they weren’t expecting me to be where I was, but I sure wouldn’t have minded a big blocker to lead the way. They take all the big hits, and I take all the glory getting the touchdown. It was a working formula in high school. Why not now?
I was through my second or third row of zombies, each hit beginning to take just a little more of my forward thrust away. I could hear the back-up warning coming from the truck. Gary had thrown the rig in reverse and was thankfully coming back. I was beginning to see the light at the end of the zunnel (zombie tunnel) when Gary crashed the truck into a street pole. The truck didn’t give so much of a shit as the pole toppled noisily to the ground. I hazarded a glance behind me as I finally broke free from the zombies. The truck was weaving all over the roadway, I think it would have been better if he had just ghost-driven the thing. No one at the helm would have been better than his maneuvers. I started timing when I should dodge to the side, getting eaten by a zombie all of a sudden seemed like the better alternative than being run over.
BT was off the ladder. For a moment, I panicked that maybe he’d fallen off, but he was waving at me from a hole cut into the side of the dump.
“Glad to see you’re alright. Now get me the fuck out of here!” I yelled.
Rifles pointed out of two other slots and bullets began to take down zombies that had turned and were beginning their pursuit o
f me. Gary was pulling even with me, which was a good thing, because a bend in the road was coming up and I was certain he’d never be able to navigate it. I jumped, grabbing the ladder in flight, my head striking the side of the truck as Gary had given the wheel a quick twist. He’d rung my bell. I had to hold onto where I was for a moment until my brain stopped sliding around inside my skull. The wheels started squealing and jittering along the pavement as Gary hit the brakes. I swung against the side of the truck. What the zombies had started Gary was going to try and finish. I swung back the other way as we were once again going forward. BT reached his arm out of the firing hole and grabbed my shoulder. Unlike him, I was thankful for the help. I’d been a human piñata for the last few seconds and my body hurt.
Gary drove another half mile with me like that until he once again stopped short. If not for BT holding me in place I would have gone through the same cycle.
“Nice driving,” I said to Gary. I added ‘asshole’ at the end, but quietly. He had saved me after all, even if he wanted to crack me open and see if I housed any internal goodies.
“You’re welcome,” he said, beaming.
We didn’t have much time; I could already see the zombies coming. I climbed up the rest of the ladder and onto the top, which was made of tarp-covered plywood. There was a small hatch up there, which I climbed through and into the dump truck equivalent of an RV.
A dark red industrial carpet was glued to the bottom of the bed; two rows of bench seats were bolted or welded there as well. The entire area was framed out with two-by-fours, which held up the ‘roof’, that was covered with a tarp in case of inclement weather. Gun wells had been cut out of the metal body on the two sides and the rear. He’d even gone so far as to weld on small channels so that the murder holes could be covered up by sliding a thick piece of metal back into place. In the front, he’d cut out an actual window, put his channels back in and fitted it with Plexiglas. This way, the folks in the back could see up front and, if need be, we could move back and forth from the cab of the truck to the dump part. Now, if this thing had a wet bar, we’d be all set. My earlier irkdom to my brother was completely forgotten. He’d created something pretty unique and fucking awesome.
“Good job, man!” I said, smacking the glass.
I could see his grinning face in the rearview mirror.
“Thanks, guys,” I told my boys and BT.
“We’re even now,” BT said. “For today.”
“Fair enough. How you doing?” I asked. “Come on, man, sit down.”
“Better now.”
He looked like shit. Finding Doc was of paramount importance, but there were still a bunch of huge problems with that. Odds he was alive and well were slim, and even if he was, would he have a ‘cure’? Would he succeed where others failed? He had to. There was no other answer. I would not watch BT die and after that, Justin’s steady decline. That was NOT an acceptable outcome. This mission was as much about them as it was about me. I know I’m flawed, I was doing this in part because I didn’t want to be put through the suffering. Is there such a thing as reverse altruism? Would God make the distinction that I was doing good for others for my own good? Same fucking thing, right?
Stop looking at me like that. You think Mother Teresa was a completely selfless person? I don’t think so. Now I’m not saying she wasn’t worthy of Sainthood, but don’t you think she took great pleasure in helping others? Helping others made her feel good, absolutely nothing wrong with that. In a nutshell, that’s exactly what I was doing. Getting Justin and BT cured would make me feel great--two big birds one huge stone. Bullet-proof argument once I needed to present it to the Big Man.
We had been driving for a while. BT was strapped in to his seat, sleeping contentedly. I smiled when I noticed Henry’s head was parked in the big man’s lap a decent sized puddle of drool leaking from the dog’s muzzle. I was pacing a bit, it was slightly claustrophobic in the back, and the roof was maybe an inch from the top of my head. I was going to see if anyone wanted to come back here so I could go up to the front. I pulled the Plexiglas back and knocked on the back window of the cab. Tommy looked back at me, his smile laced in the red of what looked like strawberry. He shrugged.
“Wanf fwon?” he asked, holding up the familiar foil packet.
“Yeah actually,” I told him when he slid the glass back. I was thankful when he handed me the entire packet. My hands were encrusted in filth so much so that I thought the crap might be able to find its way through the protective packaging.
“You want up here?” Tracy asked as I was enjoying my pastry treat.
“I’m busy,” I told her, sticking my hand up.
“I’d kick your ass, Talbot, if I wasn’t so tired,” Tracy told me. “Gary can you pull over? I would like to get in the back.”
Gary looked at her quickly and then at the window I was at.
“Oh I don’t think so,” she told him. “I’m not crawling through two windows on a moving truck no matter how much fun you think it would be.”
“It actually does look like fun,” I said.
I stuck my head out of my side and was looking down at the pavement blazing by. I thought about maybe Gary hitting a bump and me losing my footing and then I’d find myself stuck upside down in the hydraulic cabling as my head started to wear away on the ground.
“Yeah, maybe you should just stop,” I told him, getting a little sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
Gary almost tossed me out the damn window he laid on the brakes so hard. “What is your problem with the pedals, man?” I asked him once I realized my heart wasn’t going to burst.
I went back to where the hatch was, stepped up on the small ladder welded to the side and then down the other side. Gary had gotten out and was stretching.
Tracy came around and gave me a hug. “How you doing, hon?” She looked up at me.
“I’ve been better. At least she’s at rest now. I can at least tell Ron that much.” She got up on her toes and kissed me. “Thank you for that,” I told her.
“Maybe we’ll have to find a stack of books soon.”
“Works for me.”
I’d never before equated literary tomes with sex, but I was open-minded. The constant danger we were in had some inherent benefits, one being that it made you want to be more in contact with those you loved. There is comfort in intimacy.
“Next stop is Barnes and Noble,” I told her before I helped her on the ladder, not that she needed it, but it gave me the chance to cop a feel or two.
I’d never once considered Tracy anything other than beautiful, but the hardness of the apocalypse had sculpted her into something almost otherworldly. Any chance I had to grab onto that, I was going to take it.
“Want me to drive a bit?” I asked Gary once my favorable view was gone.
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” he told me.
“I know, man, I just know you pulled some long hours and worked your ass off to get this done. Great job by the way.”
“Thank you…and you’re right, I could use a little shut eye.”
Gary went up the ladder as well. I didn’t help him, if he fell off and bruised himself up a bit, I would consider it a fair measure of payback. Gary had stopped at the interchange exit for 495, which was basically a route that skirted Boston and went down through Connecticut and picked back up with its parent route. So I could stay on 95 Southbound or take 495. It wasn’t like Boston was going to be a hotbed of traffic, so that wasn’t really a factor. And in terms of distance, I think it was about the same mileage. Route 95 stayed closer to the coast, so one way bowed to the east, the other the west.
“Any reason to take one over the other?” I asked Tommy. He shrugged. “I liked it a whole lot better when Ryan would at least give you some vague clues.”
I hopped up into the cab. I was driving somewhere in the neighborhood of five miles an hour, looking back and forth at the route signs. I could not figure out why this was such a big deal, they led to exactly
the same place. I cut the wheel at the very last moment, taking 495. My final reason was that if I was that close to Boston on 95 and saw a zombified Dustin Pedroia it would make this day just that much worse.
I’d been on 495 for fifteen minutes or so and nothing untold was happening. There was a build-up of more abandoned cars as we got closer to the outskirts of Boston, but nothing that we wouldn’t be able to navigate through quite yet. And unless we started seeing tanks, I didn’t think there were too many things this truck couldn’t get through anyway. For about the fortieth time, I asked myself why no one had thought of this sooner, least of all me.
“You see that?” Tommy asked.
But unless he was talking about the small pile of crumbs he was creating in his lap, I didn’t know how he could see anything else. He had not looked up from his parade of junk food the whole time I’d been in there. I wasn’t complaining; he’d given me a Mallo Cup and a Devil Dog. From where? I didn’t care. Sometimes it’s way better to allow the mysteries of the universe to remain just that. What good has it been for science to remove all the mystery in life? Isn’t it cooler to think that the Northern Lights are the gateway to the Spirit world and that the crackling sound it sometimes makes is that of the spirits talking? Or would you rather ‘know’ that its charged particles from the sun reacting with the earth’s magnetic field?
“See what?” I asked, realizing that Tommy had even spoken.