by Mark Tufo
Chapter 18 – Dennis and Deneaux
Getting the gas had been infinitely easier than getting the hose with which to siphon it. Dennis was happy he’d only had to swallow a little of the caustic liquid before it flowed freely into the rig’s tank. Mrs. Deneaux kept a lazy lookout for trouble as she lit another cigarette.
“Do you mind?” Dennis asked. He was looking at the wavy lines caused by the gas vapors that were less than two feet from where Mrs. Deneaux was smoking.
“You’ve known me long enough now, sonny boy, to realize I don’t.”
He’d officially made up his mind at this point that, as soon as he had an opportunity, he was leaving her crazy ass behind. He just couldn’t get past the crushing feeling of loneliness when he did think about striking out alone. Everyone he knew and loved was gone or missing. He’d never felt so helpless or hopeless in his entire life. A traveler in a land without stops.
“You ever butcher animals?” Mrs. Deneaux asked after a particularly long drag.
“What?”
“Do you hunt?”
“No. Why?” Dennis asked.
“I was just wondering, because a piece of prime rib sounds about the most delicious thing in the world right now, and if I come across a cow, I’m going to shoot it and eat it. Maybe right where it lays, lord knows I’ve had rare enough cuts that they were still flopping around on my plate.”
“That’s gross,” Dennis told her.
“Weak stomach? This ride is going to be more fun than I had originally thought. You just about done?” She flipped her butt. It somersaulted less than three inches from the outer edge of the vapors.
“Crazy bitch with a death sentence. Unfortunately, it’s me she’s trying to kill,” Dennis muttered as Deneaux walked away.
He put the gas cap back on and grabbed a bottle of water to help wash the bitter after-taste of fuel from his mouth. He was leaning against the front bumper when his heart about stopped. Deneaux had given the horn a sharp long blast.
“Bitch, what is your problem!?” he said hotly.
“You might want to get a move on.” She pointed off to her side.
Dennis took a couple of steps so that he could see. It looked like a whole hideout of zombies were coming their way.
“Shit,” he said as he spun to get back to his side of the truck and in. When he was safely in, the door locked and the window completely rolled up, he turned to Deneaux. “How long have you seen them?”
“Oh, at least a quarter mile.” She smiled at him.
“No chance you could have given me a little more heads up?”
“I was wondering if you had any sixth sense in you and would maybe be able to tell. When I realized that wasn’t going to happen, I honked the horn. What more do you want?”
“Sixth sense, what are you talking about?”
“Well, I’d swear your friend Michael was prescient. He could smell trouble a mile away. Of course it didn’t stop him from going in that direction, but at least he knew something was there.”
“I just can’t believe he and Paul are dead. We shared so much. I feel like I should know in my gut. You know?” Dennis asked, looking intently at her profile.
Tears were in his eyes, because that was the emotion he was feeling, but he was also studying his driver. Something just did not sit right with her reckoning of events. She was staring straight out the window, seemingly lost deep in thought; then a zombie whacked the side of the truck, bringing her back from that distant land.
“And yet he is,” she answered as she started the truck.
It was not lost on Dennis that she used the singular while he was referring to the plural. He would dwell on the words later, but the zombies that had grabbed on to the truck were a big enough distraction for now.
“A little more warning and we wouldn’t have any hitchhikers,” Dennis told her.
“Oh, you’ve got to live a little dangerously.”
“Call me crazy, but just being alive these days would qualify.”
She looked over to Dennis. “Very good. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I seriously doubt it, but thank you. What do we do if we don’t come across a settlement of some sort?”
“I’ve got enough cigarettes to get through this lifetime. Oh, don’t worry” she said when she saw Dennis’ features fall in resignation. “Man has this innate desire to be surrounded by his or her peers.”
“I just can’t believe that there’s so few people left now.” Dennis watched as a zombie fell from his side of the truck. It struck the ground hard and spun a half dozen times before it came to a rest in the roadway. He was glad they were pulling far enough away that he could not see the damage the tumble had taken on it.
“The world’s better off,” she said callously. “Too many poor people looking for a handout. This weeds the weak ones out.”
“This isn’t a ‘weeding’ this is a genocide.”
“Toe-may-to, toe-mah-to. There were too many people. The zombies were merely a balancing act on the scales of life. Some have to die to get back to equilibrium. You can’t have any significant change without it.”
“How very New World Order of you.”
“My philandering husband was in all those hush-hush groups. They were constantly looking for ways to cull people so that dominion would be easier. Looks like they figured out half of the equation.
“You’re saying the zombie plague was purposefully created by man to control other men?” Dennis asked incredulously.
“What? You didn’t know? Well then I have a whopper to tell you about Santa Claus.”
“Hilarious.”
“It probably was my asshole ex. If not for me, he’d be waiting out this whole thing in a secure bunker somewhere. Looking for the opportune time to come out and lead the survivors to salvation.”
“What do you mean if it wasn’t for you? Did you turn him in?”
“In a matter of speaking. Are you a cop?” she asked, cackling.
“No.” His eyebrows furrowing while trying to figure out what she was talking about.
“I killed the cheating bastard. Who knows, maybe if I’d done it a few days sooner, I could have prevented all of this. But where would the fun be in that? I would have missed out on all this,” she said, taking her hands off the steering wheel spreading her arms wide.
“This is a good time for you? Are you kidding me?”
“I haven’t been this alive in decades,” she said, finally putting her hands back on the wheel.
“Billions of people are either dead or zombies.”
“Most of them, I’m sure, were assholes.”
“These men that are hiding, do they have a cure?”
“I can’t imagine a cure, but they’ll have inoculation. They have to offer something to get the survivors to become subservient to them. Probably something that needs a booster shot as well.”
“So instead of a true vaccination, it will be something like a tetanus shot?”
“You’re getting it now. Otherwise it would be like making a light bulb that never burns out.”
“Your husband was in on this?”
“He always was ambitious…at least with me pushing him,” Mrs. Deneaux said.
“I’m sorry, this isn’t ambition this is murder. Do you have any idea where these men are?”
“I have an idea. Why?” she asked suspiciously.
“We need to get what they have.”
“Yes, we’ll just waltz right in to their heavily fortified bunker, grab what we need, and be on our merry little way.”
“Exactly,” Dennis said, finally feeling better. Maybe there was a chance of something more in this life than just making it to the next day.
“You’re serious?”
Dennis nodded.
“Why not? It would be nice to have some servants afoot.”
“Where to, then?” Dennis asked.
“Why, the cradle of civilization,” Deneaux said matter-of-factly. Dennis wore another look
of confusion. “Athens of course.”
“How are we going to get to Greece?” Dennis groaned.
“Georgia,” Mrs. Deneaux once again cackled.
Dennis didn’t know if he was getting used to her, or if it was that they had some hope, but the grating noise that issued forth from the fissure in her face wasn’t quite as irritating now as it had been.
Chapter 19 – Mike Journal Entry 9
Once everyone got settled and I convinced Trip I did not have Stephanie’s sneakers anymore, we left. This time I decided 95 South was the better of the choices. I backtracked on the Mass Pike towards Boston and went on our alternate road. The bikers may have had enough and maybe they hadn’t. If we however stumbled across them, they might be so inclined as to start the fight anew, and I was still sore from my last go around. I had a small pucker mark to remember our last exchange.
I had told Justin to come up front with me as I drove so we could have some privacy. BT was having some symptoms creep up on him, and I wanted—no, I needed—to know how my son was feeling.
“How you doing?” I asked him.
“I’m not as bad as BT,” he answered, quickly getting where this conversation was going. “I’ve been getting these bad cramps in my gut every couple of days for about the last week. At first I thought it might be Aunt Lyndsey’s cooking.”
We both laughed at that. “What changed your mind?”
“I’d still get the pains even when she didn’t cook. And then I started watching BT when I knew he thought he was alone. We’re kind of on the same time line.”
“Huh?”
“When I hurt, he hurts. And unless he’s the world’s biggest baby, I’m thinking he’s in a lot more pain.”
This was killing me to ask, and I knew I didn’t even want the answer. “How long?”
“Dad, BT might be days away. I figure I’ve got a week or two at the tops.”
And there it was, my heart was wrenching in my chest. It felt like my rib cage was crushing in on itself like I had a working garbage disposal in there. We were coming full circle to that time in my office the night he had been scratched going on the fool’s trip to save Paul. And for what? My fucking friend and his wife were dead. Maybe they would have been able to ride the damn thing out in their attic. Couldn’t be worse, that’s for sure. So we had potentially only forestalled my son’s death and theirs.
You know when you’re watching a movie, and the hero or heroine says ‘I’d give anything for just one more second with…(insert loved one here)’ that’s bullshit. I’m fucking greedy, I don’t want the blink of an eye, I want years. I want barbecues, grandkids, weddings. I want all the shit that goes with a full life lived. I don’t want one beat of a heart, can’t even say a proper goodbye in that time frame. I had seventy-two hours or so to save my friend—not much more than that to save my son—and I truly didn’t have a clue where to start.
Well, if my theory about God had even a shred of validity, the big man was going to have to pull out all the stops on this adventure. Just the same, I was trying to put the gas pedal to the floor on the plow. We were heading south at a respectable seventy-five miles per hour. I was lost in no small amount of worry when Travis knocked on the Plexiglas divider. Justin turned and slid the glass back.
“They’re back,” he said.
“What the fuck did Trip do to these guys?” I asked no one.
“I don’t know, maybe they paid him for some origami,” Travis replied.
“What? Have you been around him too long? It’s probably a contact high. You want to sit up front with us?” I asked Travis.
“I’m fine,” he laughed. “He just keeps wadding up pieces of paper and then he displays them as works of art to us.”
“Yeah, that pretty much sounds like him. How far are the bikers?”
“Half mile.”
“What are you going to do about those pansies?” BT asked, nearly crowding Travis out of the window. More quietly, he spoke this part. “Mike, let me sit up there with you. This Trip guy has pudding for brains. He keeps calling me TP, and then stops himself and asks if I’m Native American.”
“What? Oh…tepee, I get it,” I said.
“Yeah, so do I, but I don’t want to sit near him anymore. I thought your form of crazy might be catchy, but it oozes off of him.”
“I’d love to help you, man, I would,” I smiled, “but with the bikers so close behind us, I don’t want to stop the truck. Maybe you should help him fold up some paper.”
“Oh, and that’s another thing. He hands me this thing that looks like a paper meatball and he asked me what I thought of his rendition of the Eiffel Tower. I mean, this shit can’t be for real can it?”
“You get used to him.”
“Mike, I don’t want to. He kind of scares me, man.”
“A biker gang is pursuing us and you’re more worried about a guy that torched his last brain cell back in 1979?”
“Exactly,” BT replied.
Chapter 20 – Doc
“So, Captain Najarian, is it true what the captured truckers said?” Dixon Hawes, former Senator of Texas and one of the richest men in the world, asked.
“I rarely trust the word of a prisoner being tortured, but it does seem that they were telling the truth,” The captain answered.
“So the mythical Dr. Hugh Mann’s suitcase is real. I never thought I’d see the day when that would be discovered. How is Doctor Baker doing?”
“His research is going well. I don’t believe that he has caught up to our team yet, though.”
“Should we bring him into the fold, Captain?”
“I don’t think so, sir. From what I can tell, he’s approaching the problem from a different angle. I don’t know who’s right and who isn’t, but to have him see our progress may alter his way of solving the problem.”
“Agreed. Have you got copies of the contents of the case?”
“It took two valiums in the good Doctor’s dinner to do it. He never leaves the suitcase. It has all been copied and brought to the main research facility.”
“He has no idea the true purpose of this place?”
“No, sir, he believes it to be what I told him.”
“Would he come on board if he did know?”
“Doubtful, sir.”
“What about using this Porkchop as leverage?”
“I would prefer it didn’t come to that, sir, but possibly.”
“Just a few more months, Captain, and we would already be in power. That’s how close we were to a vaccine. I don’t know what that idiot Deneaux was thinking.”
Winston Deneaux owned the facilities that had housed the viral agent. It had been his sole job in the whole process to safeguard it and then distribute the weapon when he was told to.
“He lost focus when he started screwing his secretary,” Dixon said, his large jowls turning a shade of angry red.
Captain Najarian had heard this rant before and stayed quiet. He did not remind Hawes that it had been the senator’s idea to send Lori Stanton to spy on Winston. The captain was impressed that the old geezer could even get it up to do her. Had to be pills, he mused. Even with Deneaux’s screw up, the captain had been sent to retrieve Winston once the zombies came. When he got to the house, someone had beaten him there. The old man was sitting in his armchair with a neat bullet hole drilled through his head. Looked like a professional hit. The poor bastard hadn’t even seen it coming.
“What about this Michael Talbot? Has there been any luck in finding him?” Dixon asked.
“Sir, it’s a little difficult to spare the resources looking for this man right now.”
“I want him found, Captain. The man and his family were in possession of the suitcase for over seventy years, we need to know if they’ve discovered any secrets to the doctor’s research. We cannot afford any loose ends, do you understand me?”
“Loud and clear, sir.”
“Then I want you to make this your first priority. Send up those drones a
nd have those little video game players find him!” Spittle was now coming down the senator’s chin.
“Sir, if he’s out there, the pilots will find him. If not, I can assemble a team and we’ll go up to his brother’s house in Maine.”
“No more loose ends, Captain. We’re so close I can taste it. We will run this world the way it was intended. With an iron fist!” he shouted as he brought his hand down on the table they were seated at.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, the captain thought. But he was not complaining, he had been promised complete control of the military, and once the zombies were eradicated, he would rebuild an army that the world would quake at. Looks like I caught a little of the fever. In theory, he liked everything the Triumvirate stood for. It was an equality of all those below the ruling class.
Crime would be wiped from the planet, because to commit one was tantamount to suicide. Justice would be swift and final. Man would be free to practice whatever faith they desired so long as it started with a solemn prayer to the Triumvirate. People would earn their keep or they would be denied the protection and vaccination they offered. As quickly as the senator and his party could give, they could take away. Even if a person had received the vaccination there was a way to override the produced antibodies and reintroduce the zombie virus. All those that did as the ruling class dictated were safe. A populace that had to capitulate or die, that would ensure their complicity.
The Captain had always considered himself a patriot and now he was on the side for Socialism. ‘Wouldn’t the world be better off with one leader, one direction. All striving for the betterment...of what.’ He paused. ‘Dixon.’ Was the only answer he could come up with. Dixon had approached him with such lofty ideals when the plan was in its infancy. A world without wars, hate, drugs, crime, the worst of humanity wiped clean from the planet.
‘We’ll be the new Noah’s Ark.’ Dixon had promised.
On some level the Captain knew the fallacy, less people meant less war, hate, drugs and crime but certainly not the eradication of them. It was the power Dixon offered that truly intrigued him, no matter what Dixon’s words said, it was the implied meaning that spurred them both on.