by Mark Tufo
“Oh fucking hell, it’s the ugly one. Well, looks like I’ll be doing the world that favor after all,” he said as he began to spin.
I grabbed the rifle as he came around.
“What the fuck, man. You can’t do that…I’ve got protection!” he screamed, his voice rising in multiple octaves as fear lanced his body. I ripped the gun from his hand, from the wincing he did; I was convinced I had broken a finger or two.
“I have a vial!” he bellowed as if this alone would stop me from my present course.
“What, this thing?” I asked him as I wrenched it from his neck.
“You...you talk?” He was trying to back up.
He looked like a person that had seen Casper in those cartoons I watched as a kid.
“I can juggle, too, but this probably isn’t the appropriate time,” I told him as I bit deeply into his shoulder. I tore through his denim jacket and his cotton blend t-shirt and found pay dirt beneath as I sank into soft tissue and muscle. I pulled a long, thick string of him away.
“Are you done playing?” Grant asked from the truck.
Remy was gurgling a cry of shock and anguish as I dived in for another morsel.
“Answer the man,” I said between lip smacks. “We’re civilized people.”
He was going into shock as his arm began to fall towards the ground. I had chewed through the connective tissue and the ball joint. “Stay with me, buddy,” I said as I slapped him across the face. He regained some degree of consciousness. “I prefer my food raw and kicking,” I told him as I pulled his arm free and began to gnaw on the nub.
“Remy?” Grant asked, opening the truck door.
“Vial,” Remy stuttered.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard all about this magical vial. I’m going to shove it up your ass when I’m done,” I told him as I pulled him behind the truck and out of sight of Grant.
“Remy, what the fuck are you doing, man? We’ve got to go,” Grant said, starting to sound a little pissed off.
“Hold your fucking horses…he’ll be there in a minute!” I shouted.
“Remy man, that’s not funny. That doesn’t sound like you.”
“He must be the brains of the outfit,” I said to a rapidly fading Remy.
I hurriedly ripped through the flesh of his cheeks and under his chin, not enough to kill him quickly, but enough that I could peel his face up over his forehead. I pushed him past the back of the truck and into Grant’s field of vision.
It was a moment before Grant’s cognition took over. He screamed much like I’d hoped he would. More power to him, though, he didn’t come to help his friend. I heard the truck door slam shut and the truck began to pull away as quickly as he could get it started and into gear. The zombies descended on poor Remy like rats on a discarded baby.
“Ooops,” I said as I held the vial up. Remy couldn’t even die with dignity by falling to the ground; zombies tore at him from every angle. “Well there goes breakfast.” I said as I placed the vial in my pocket and walked off.
CHAPTER NINE
“Don’t you ever fucking do that again, Hugh,” I chastised my little parasite.
I don’t know if he was being petulant or still recovering from my attack, but he wasn’t responding.
“You damn near got us killed. Once again I had to save our asses.”
I needed him to know who was boss, or at least lead him to believe that. I think if he hadn’t been so fixated on eating he would have turned against me, and who knows what could have happened in a surprise attack.
It was a few miles before I got back to our car. I dressed back up in my dried and somewhat clean outfit. There was something very liberating about walking the world naked, but on the flip side, there was entirely too much vulnerability. I started the car, waited for some sign of Hugh to show himself and then I drove off.
I was feeling pretty good about the day. I had avoided a near disaster, reestablished my supremacy, and even gotten a little snack out of it. All in all, a good start.
“Want to drive?” I asked Hugh. He poked his head out of whatever corner he had it buried in. “You do, don’t you? Okay, you take this hand,” I said, holding up my left, not sure if he knew right from left. “I’ll keep hold on the other. If I tell you to let go, you do it. Sound good?” Again, no answer beyond the pins-and-needles sensation when my left arm up to my shoulder fell under his dominion.
He was like a teenager who had seen his first tit as he gripped the wheel. The car nearly flipped as he pulled it hard to the right. “Easy, killer,” I said, righting the ship. “Just follow the yellow line like it’s a blood trail. That should be easy enough for you.”
After a few false starts and a near horrific fiery exit from the world, he caught on pretty quickly. I still don’t know why I had felt the need to show him how to do one more human thing. He showed the ability to adapt and learn, and I was giving him just one more reason to think he could do this on his own. I don’t know…maybe it was a death wish. Maybe my religious upbringing was finally making me see the errors of my ways. Or, more likely, I thought it was funnier than fuck, kind of like teaching your dog how to drive. Who wouldn’t want to see that shit?
When our exit was coming up I told him, and he complied, yielding my arm once again. Driving was easy enough on a straight highway, but I was not going to trust him in a suburban neighborhood.
“Getting close,” I mumbled.
I stopped to look over the map once again. The action was superfluous as I already had the damn thing memorized, but I wanted this to go off without a hitch. I ditched the car a few blocks from my destination. Yuppieville looked bad; it looked just like you would expect a neighborhood to look when all of the residents believe the omnipotent government and its servants would be there to get their entitled asses out of a jam but failed and failed miserably. When the system failed to protect them, they were wholly unprepared to defend themselves.
“Serves them right,” I said as I passed another burned out shell of a once opulent home.
What wasn’t burned was riddled with bullets, and/or steeped in blood. Babies defending their sandboxes would have put up a better fight. Now I was concerned, not for myself, but rather for Scarlett and her family. Did they survive? I had to hope so; otherwise this entire journey would be for naught. My stomach was twisting at the realization that they may already all be dead. I had never taken any of that into account until I stepped into this town.
I guess even I thought the spoiled people here would have been somehow able to pay someone to save their collective asses. I was so damned distraught I almost completely passed by my destination. I stopped at the walkway leading up to the house.
“Real sneaky, Tim. You sure are a stealthy one, should have joined the Rangers or something,” I said aloud. “Too fucking late now.” I walked up the pathway. “Fucking nice place you’ve got here.” I admired the house from the deck.
Unlike the majority of the houses along the street, this one seemed in pretty good shape. That relieved some of my angst. I twisted the door handle – locked. That was also a good sign. I dwelled on ringing the doorbell, but I was still thinking I had the element of surprise on my side. The mere fact that someone inside hadn’t tried to drill me with a bullet was a fair indicator. Unless of course they had listened to the media hype and decided guns were bad and were even now huddled behind the couch with a rolled up newspaper getting ready to swipe at me when I showed myself.
“Well, no sense in keeping them waiting.”
I walked around the wrap-around deck to the back door that had not fared nearly as well as the front. Someone had kicked it in but there were no signs of a struggle, and even more confusing, the kitchen was pretty much intact. If it was raiders, I had to believe their second point of business after checking the house would have been food, the first being weapons.
“Weird,” I said as I crunched down on some glass, silently thanking myself for having put my shoes back on.
I cautiou
sly moved through the rest of the household just on the off chance that someone was still here and had something marginally more effective than the rolled up newspaper to defend themselves with. The house was empty – not cleaned out, but empty. Furious didn’t even begin to describe my feelings. If Yorley and Scarlett hadn’t come here, they could have gone anywhere, and I wasn’t about to go door-to-door looking for them. Odds were the two hadn’t even made it here. I would have to live with the semi-satisfaction that someone else had meted out my revenge. That sat about as well as Remy’s cirrhosis-plagued liver in my gut.
I did a once-over one more time, even checking out the crawl space where I had nearly gotten stuck. Nothing except a family of spiders, which I ate merely for spite. I crunched them down angrily. As I came up out of the basement, I went into the living room and sat heavily on the love seat. I didn’t know what to do, for a moment it seemed that I had lost the purpose for my existence. I knew that was bullshit even as I thought it, but that’s what went through my mind. The sun was making its arduous way across the sky and I hadn’t moved. It was only a matter of time before Hugh began his incessant nagging about food. I was sitting with my head hanging down, my hands pressed to my face. As the last licks of sunlight retreated from my perch, I was immersed in the quiet of the night.
I wanted to lie down, maybe this time give Hugh the opening he needed to finish me off, then I heard it: a metallic clang. It was soft, but in the preternatural quiet of a man-less world, it was unmistakable and alien. I propped my head up. The moon had not yet ascended but that was not that great a hindrance for me. A small light diffused as if by a cloth bobbed in the room across from me – the kitchen. I heard footfalls on the same broken glass I had traversed earlier.
Could I have beat them here after all my delays? Chances were they had encountered just as many obstacles. My sweet Yorley was finally coming home to roost. And I couldn’t have been any happier than a gold miner striking a life-altering vein of ore. I was so excited that I was almost tapping my feet. I stayed in my chair, making sure whoever it was came all the way in. The small light turned and went deeper into the kitchen. I heard some minor fumbling around; however, it was not the chaos and disorder of a raider, this was someone that knew the layout and was looking for something in particular.
Might as well say hello, I thought. I stood, the chair groaned as I did so – this went completely unnoticed by my houseguest.
I leaned up against the entry into the kitchen. I could see the back of a good-sized man (or an Amazonian woman) stooped down and grabbing something out of the bottom of a nearly cleared pantry closet.
“Hi there,” I said in my least gravelly menacing voice.
The light swung around so fast I thought the man – that’s what he was – was going to tip over. The muted light barely cut through the murkiness of the night, but still, he saw enough of me to gasp.
“What do you want?” he asked, dropping the six-pack he had snagged inside the small closet. He started to fight with his holster that was now gripping his sidearm in a vise-like hold.
“Hold on there, buddy,” I said, pulling the hammer back on my own gun. The metallic noise froze him in place.
“This is my house,” he said over the hiss of the escaping beer. One of the cans had burst from its impact with the tile flooring.
“Talk about dying for a beer, huh?” I stated with a laugh. The man was not amused; I could see his eyes darting around for an escape avenue. “You celebrating something?” I asked him.
He was still eyeing me warily.
“Okay, let’s start over,” I told him. “Just keep your hand away from your holster, okay?” I released the hammer on my gun and slowly lowered it to my side. He relaxed somewhat, but not completely. Can’t say I blamed him. I still smelled fairly ripe. There’s no amount of washing that is going to cleanse the smell off a massive meat eater and especially one that eats the most disgusting meat available: man. I was fairly confident he couldn’t see my dual face, probably looked like a blurry distorted image, or a trick of the light if he was trying to rationalize it.
“Are you Scarlett’s husband?” I asked. Odds were this was the case.
“What?” Hoped seemed to surge through him when he mistakenly figured me to be a friend of his wife and that he might yet live through this encounter. “You know Scarlett?” he asked, advancing a step and stopping probably when he realized my ‘blurry’ face wasn’t clarifying.
“We’ve met a couple of times,” I told him honestly.
“Oh thank God, I thought you were going to kill me. Would have been a shitty night for that.” His relief made him chatty I let him keep going. “Scarlett and her friend...”
“Yorley?” I asked interjecting, my heart hammering.
“Yes, Yorley,” he said, all smiles. “I was so worried about my wife…hadn’t seen her since the zombies came. I waited as long as I could and packed as many supplies into the shelter as would fit while I waited for her. Of all the damn things to forget, I leave the beer. But I had to get it now that there’s something to celebrate.”
“How’s her head?” I asked.
“Oh, you know about that? Probably a hairline fracture in her skull and definitely a concussion, but I’m trained in sports medicine and I have some decent medical supplies in the shelter, she should be fine. It’s just so good to have her back.”
“I bet. Did she tell you what happened?”
“No, she’s really been out of it mostly, and Yorley doesn’t talk too much. Keeps pacing the shelter like a caged animal.”
“That’s my Yorley,” I said proudly.
“You guys an item?”
“Oh, we have a history. Kind of a love-hate thing, she hates me and I love her.”
Mr. Speight was looking at me strangely.
“So where is this little shelter thingy?” I asked, closing in on him.
“I really should be getting back.” His earlier panic was returning.
“I agree, let’s go,” I told him as I got up close and personal, his flashlight able to illuminate my facial features from this distance; although from the way he quickly lowered it, I’m pretty sure he wished it hadn’t.
“I...I have an idea, we’ll surprise them. I’ll tell them you’re here and then you can come in. They’ll love that,” he said, doing his best to keep a semblance of a smile on his face.
“Yeah, that sure would be a surprise. But I’d really like to be there for the big reveal.” I grabbed his arm and placed my pistol up against his lip, scraping the barrel against the front of his tooth. It etched deeply into the enamel. “Drop your gun on the floor.”
“It’s not loaded,” The man said, letting his head drop low.
“You’re fucking kidding, right?”
He shook his head.
“You do know there’s all sorts of bad things out there, don’t you? In here as well I guess.”
He nodded in ascension this time.
“Well, let’s prove your point and have a little fun. Slowly, pull your gun out of its holster,” I said as I simultaneously pulled the hammer back on my gun. He flinched as I did so. “Put your gun up against your head.”
He did as I told him to.
“Well where do you think I’m going with this?” I asked. “Pull the fucking trigger, dumb ass.”
He did so without the slightest bit of hesitation.
“I keep thinking this world is going to be the survival of the fittest, and yet I keep coming across some of the stupidest shits on the planet. I just wiped out a gang of crack heads just yesterday. Crack heads, can you believe it? And now I come across you, out in the middle of the night, getting beer with an unloaded gun. I feel like I’ll be doing the evolutionary process a favor by disposing of you. If the world were still normal, you’d probably get a Darwin award.”
“Please…I have kids.”
“Two right?” I asked a bit too eagerly.
“I won’t take you to them,” he said stoically.
&
nbsp; “Oh, I can be very persuasive.” I pressed the barrel of the gun so hard against his forehead the skin split and began to well up in droplets of blood. “Fine…how about the mouth?” I shoved the gun in, cracking one of his teeth on the front sight. He gagged as I pushed it in deep. He mumbled something around the steel. I pulled the gun out.
“Just kill me. I’ll never lead you to them.”
I slammed him on the side of the head with the butt of my gun. He fell to his knees. I kneed him in the nose, blood gushed from his shattered proboscis. He fell over to the side cupping his hands over his wounded facial feature.
“What about now?” I asked leaning down.
He shook his head. I kicked him so hard in the nuts it was long minutes before he stopped retching. A pool of sweet water lay by his face, his shattered nose all but forgotten as he protectively covered his damaged jewels.
“That do any convincing?”
I didn’t give him an opportunity to respond as I kicked him in his spine. He howled in pain from the contact. It unfurled his fetal position, he was writhing in agony, not sure where to cover up next.
“Are they worth it?” I asked, leaning over and whispering in his ear.
I licked up the water that was running from his eyes, then I flicked my tongue to drink in some of the blood and snot coming from his nose. “Delicious,” I sighed, my eyes half closing as I basked in his taste.
“Pl-pl-please,” he finally managed to get out.
“Come on, man, you know how this is going to go down. You either give them all up and die in a little while. Or you die now, well, I mean after a thorough beating that is.”
I started humming the tune to Jeopardy as I awaited his response. By the time I got to the end of the little ditty he still had not responded. I rolled him over onto his back and dropped down onto my knees while simultaneously bringing my fist into his nose. The grinding crunch as I drove soft cartilage into delicate facial bones was quite satisfying. I ground my fist around for added effect. His legs were kicking about wildly as he screamed in pain – at least as loudly as he could with the blood choking his throat.