A Plague Upon Your Family

“Nice place you got here.”

“Hi hon.” I said groggily, and somewhat disoriented. Something incredible had just happened but it would be days later before I could put it to page. Tracy proceeded to get into the sleeping bag I had set up. Within seconds, my earlier ‘dream’ forgotten I pounced on her with all the grace of a jungle cat on valium.

“What the hell are you doing?” She asked with a trace of bewilderment.

“You know.” I said softly.

“No I don’t.” She answered.

“Come on you know.” I said trying to lead her on.

“No I do not…wait are you trying to fool around?” She asked incredulously. “Are you effen crazy!” She barked. Her voice was rising exponentially. “You’ve got a better chance of shitting out gold coins!”

I didn’t think that was feasible, so apparently getting laid was out of the question. My humiliation was compounded by the riotous laughing of BT. I’m a guy, no matter how dire the situation, if we’re not quite dead yet, we’re thinking about sex. My face flamed as I fell asleep. No wonder I dreamt about a tanning bed.

Why do they put nipples on modeling dummies? I pondered the next morning as I arose out of the tent, shifting around what the good God gave me. Fucken BT, always Johnny on the spot, was there to witness my indignation.

“Got any change for a $20 Gold Eagle? I see you didn’t get that taken care of last night?” He laughed.

I was about to verbally whiplash him, when the next word out of his mouth saved the day.

“Coffee?” I started walking over to him. “Don’t get too close, we hardly know one another.” He laughed again.

“Fucken funny.” I said as I grabbed a mug of the steaming goodness. Dunkies it wasn’t, but it was still incredible in its own right. I sat down next to him just to fuck with him. I attempted to put my arm around him.

BT shot up like a bottle rocket. “Dude?!” BT said disbelievingly.

I feigned innocence.

BT moved his small camping chair to the far side of our impromptu campfire. Sometime during the night someone had found and placed a Styrofoam prop fire resplendent with rocks and logs into the middle of our clearing.

As BT settled his not insignificant weight into the chair I had to ask. “How the hell is that thing supporting your weight.”

“Play nice boys.” Jen said as she came from the direction of the restrooms. She handed BT a canteen heavy with water. BT drank greedily, easily consuming half of the contents.

“Want some?” BT asked as he held the canteen out towards me.

“No, I’m good. I’ll go get my own.” I answered.

“Mike, just take this one man.” He said thrusting the canteen a little closer to my face.

“Don’t sweat it man. I’ll go get my own.”

“There’s some right here. Don’t be difficult.” BT said, his dander starting to get a little riled.

“BT I don’t want it. I’ll get my own.” I said a little more sternly.

“It’s because I’m black isn’t it!” He yelled.

Jen had stopped what she was doing to see how this potentially volatile situation panned out. Oh I knew how it would end up, my teeth in BT’s knuckles seemed the most likely scenario.

“BT, come on you know me better than that.”

“I don’t know shit.” He hissed. His bulk seemingly swelled in proportion to his anger. He was a second and a half from coming out of his chair.

All of the boys were now a few feet away, Brendon was coming to the forefront, trying his best to throw a wedge between me and BT. I didn’t think he would even qualify as a speed bump if BT got going.

Tracy had taken this, the most blessed of opportunities to emerge from our tent.

“BT.” She said with no small amount of force.

“My beef’s not with you Tracy.” BT said never taking his eyes off of me. “Is this how you want it Mike? You’re woman doing your battles for you.”

“BT!” My wife yelled.

“What WOMAN!” He shouted back.

“He wouldn’t take that canteen if I handed it to him.” Tracy said.

“Huh?” BT asked, confusion creasing his brow.

“BT, Mike is a germ-a-phobe. I swear to you as I stand here, he would not take that canteen from me if I had just taken a drink from it.”

“Really?” BT asked incredulously. He then turned back to me. “I guess I owe you an apology.” He said as he laughed. “Wait then how do you two kiss? Forget it I don’t want to know.” And then apparently this was the funniest thing in the world. In between swigs of the canteen BT would break out into spontaneous laughter. “Can’t…kiss.” He laughed. “You have cooties.” If the guy wasn’t such a solid block of granite he probably would have split his sides he ended up laughing so hard.

“No shit Mike? You can’t drink off someone else’s beverage?” Jen asked. “That’s funny.”

I forced an anemic smile. Neurosis number 22 had reared its ugly head.

“How’d you have kids? Artificial insemination?” BT said roaring with laughter. “Immaculate conception? Wait…wait…I know…stunt double!”

I got up and left BT to his own devises, at this pace it would be hours before he realized I was gone.

“Holy shit, Mike. That was close.” Brendon said, as we put a few feet between us and the tittering titan.

“Yeah about that Brendon, I appreciate the sentiment. But you’ve seen the propensity I have for getting into trouble.”

“In a hurry.” He added.

“In a hurry.” I conceded. “The point is Brendon, I don’t want to drag anyone else down with me.” He looked crestfallen. “Like I said Brendon, I do appreciate the help, I just couldn’t live with the guilt if anything happened to anyone of you, especially if it was to save my ass.” He looked like he was about to say something. I didn’t want to give him any room for maneuverability. “Besides can you imagine how bad Nicole would make it for me?” I looked at him questioningly.

“I suppose you’re right.” Brendon acknowledged.

I arched an eyebrow at him.

“No you’re definitely right.” He concluded.

BT had for the most part calmed down. Tracy, I guess wasn’t ready to let him off the hook, quite yet. “Yeah you should see what he has to do before he gets on a toilet.”

“Tracy!” I shouted, more than a smidgeon mortified.

“Oh that’s not even the worst of it, at…”

“Oh for the love of God.”

Justin, Travis and Tommy had resumed their dummy target practice. Now seemed as good a time as any to see how it was going. Two rows of seven dummies were lined up like advancing zombies. Errant arrows were strewn everywhere including the ceiling, but more than a proportionate amount had struck their targets with withering precision. As we came up to the ‘range’ Tommy was drawing the bow back, he let loose an arrow that created sparks as it plunged feet well short of its intended target.

“Good one, Tommy.” Travis said. “That’s your closest one yet.

Tommy was beaming. “You fink?” He asked as he handed the strawberry jelly coated bow to Justin.

“Uck.” Justin said as he pulled out a small box of baby wipes just for this occasion.

Brendon and I both looked quizzically at each other. Brendon broke the silence first.

“Mike this is about a third of the distance when he shot that guy from Durgan’s assault.”

I nodded, what words were there?

“And now he has a professional bow, not that piece of crap kid’s toy.

I nodded again. It was nice to know that someone else was seeing what I’d been seeing for a while.

“What’s up Hon?” Nicole said as she wrapped her arms around Brendon. “You look a little out of sorts.”

“Nothing babe.” Brendon said as he leaned down to kiss her.

I turned away slightly. I didn’t want to make anybody else uneasy. It was just that well dammit, I could not get the image of my daughter being anything other than that precocious seven year old, daddy’s little girl thing, out of my head. I know she’s an adult and she has her own life now. It’s just that in my reality she has chosen the realm of celibacy. It’s small measures like this that allow me to sleep at night. One of these days I know, sooner rather than later, my brain is just going to freeze up. It will be the human equivalent of the blue screen of death. Unfortunately I have yet to discover my reboot button.

Justin let loose his shot. Everyone laughed and cringed in equal measures as the arrow struck the dummies stones. I swear he looked right at me for half a heartbeat before he joined in the celebration with everyone else. A loud ‘twang’ up by the front of the store cut the revelry short. I should have taken charge and started delegating. Getting out of the store alive should have been my main objective. But I’ll admit, curiosity got the better of me. For one fleeting night since this whole shit storm started I had felt good, safe even. But it was all an illusion as I was about to painfully learn.

Travis was first to the front. “No biggie Dad, there’s only one.”

He didn’t have to add…zombie.

“Uh…Dad there’s more.” Travis said hesitantly.

“Well shit, there’s always more. They’re like fucking wolves, pack animals.” I said peevishly. I was more than a little pissed that my home away from home was no longer the safe haven I had deemed it to be.

Brendon and Nicole had reached the front and were standing next to Travis. Nicole had turned and was running back to our ‘campsite’. She said nothing as she brushed past.

“What’s the matter with her?” I asked. I was really hoping it was the overly dramatic part of Nicole coming out. It wasn’t.

“Mike you’re going to want to see this.” Brendon swallowed.

“Am I?” I asked. I was liking this less and less. And then someone punched the shit out of me. Figuratively, although literally would have been better. My old world nemesis stood less than 3 feet away from me separated only by a flimsy pane of glass no thicker than a coke bottle.

“Oh Jed. What did they do to you?” I wanted to cry. I fell to my knees, hampered somewhat by the new sport brace I had ‘acquired’ but to the ground I went. I buried my face in my hands, tears of true sorrow leaked through my clenched fingers. My body tensed each time Jed head butted the glass. His mouth snapping wildly at the air, drool ran viscously down the front of his tattered shirt. A broken tooth protruded at a slight angle from his top lip. Dirty, fingernail torn hands scratched at the glass. Cataract clouded eyes stared pitilessly at me. It wasn’t until I let my gaze travel lower that my resolve got steeled or more likely my innards got liquefied. “Brendon, take Justin and Travis and let’s start the evacuation process like we talked about last night.”

Brendon had learned quick enough to not question orders for that I was thankful. “One car or two Mike.” He shot back quickly.

“We’ll do two, but let’s make it really quick.”

Curiosity was killing him I could almost sense it. “There’s only a couple Mike. I know it’s Jed and all, but still.”

I pointed to a small nametag festooned to Jed’s breast pocket.

“Oh fuck.” Brendon, turned on a dime, Travis and Justin were on his heels.

I stared long and hard into Jed’s eyes trying with every particle of my being to discern some small part of him that may have retained anything remotely resembling humanity. There was nothing there. He would eat me as quickly as the next without the smallest bit of remorse for what he did. I slowly removed the weights that BT had placed the night before. Each one seemed to be attached to my heart, miring it down into the depths of despair. BT came up just as I had finished pulling the last 50 pounder out of the way.

“Oh I knew if I waited long enough I wouldn’t have to move those things again.” BT said in way to jovial a mood for my liking. He saw that I was not enjoying his conviviality. “What’s up Mike? I mean Nicole came back crying and then the boys said that we had to get stuff ready to go, but they said there was only a few zombies.”

I just pointed out the door. Jed had followed me and watched me hungrily as I cleared the doorway.

“It’s just a…Jed? Is that Jed? What the fuck is Jed doing here?”

“Look at his name tag.”

“What the fuck is a zombie doing with a name tag?” BT asked. His features turned ashen as he focused in on the little white card.

I hated nametags and this one wasn’t going to do anything to change that. Anyplace you ever had to go where people needed a nametag was not a place that I wanted to frequent. I don’t give a shit if you’re Cindy from Spokane, I didn’t know you before tonight and I have no desire to know you after. Do they use them at High School reunions so that you recognize then laugh at the football jock who is now fifty pounds overweight and balding? Or maybe for the prom queen who pumped out 5 kids, smokes like a chimney and now scratches her ass in public? I mean if that’s the case then I guess they’re alright, but Jed’s nametag didn’t give a name, only a message. ‘Found You’. Those two ominous words were a personal affront. Don’t get me wrong I understood that this world was now a survival of the fittest. It was a depraved cruel world and getting harsher by the moment. Zombies were everywhere and would attempt to eat us with wild abandonment. Renegade roves of thieves, muggers, pillagers and general degenerates were also out there and given the opportunity would take everything they could from us. But this was different. We were being hunted, purposefully sought out for extermination. My fears for my family soared to new depths of despair. Like life wasn’t already hard enough. I had come to love Jed, but I thought no more for the bullet I put through his head than he would have had he got a hold of my flesh.

“FUCK YOU!” I screamed into the day, hopeful that my words would find the ears of those that came after us.

And they did, but not with the desired effect. The car that had delivered Jed sat idling in the shadows of an alleyway across from the sporting goods store. Cigarette smoke poured out through the slightly open window, a mirthless laugh escaped the driver’s dry and cracked lips “Soon Talbot, so very, very soon.” The car pulled out and away on the deserted roadway as Jed’s body twitched one final time on the frozen pavement.

CHAPTER 15

Within ten minutes we were loaded up and on the road. My mood couldn’t have been any more sour if I had just come home to realize my wife had run off with my best friend and taken the dog. (Wait, scratch that, if she had taken Henry that would have been worse.) A small grim grin bubbled to the surface with that new thought.

“Mike.” Tracy said her face a lighter shade of white. “Mike.” She said again when I didn’t immediately respond. “Brendon’s having a tough time keeping up.”

“Huh.” I said breaking free from my black thoughts.

“Brendon, the other minivan, they can’t keep up.” She said, her knuckles white on the dashboard.

The tachometer was buried deep in the red as the Terrible Teal machine was topping out at somewhere near 120 miles per hour. I couldn’t be sure because the numbers only went to 110 but the needle was pressed firmly against the upraised stop pin. Brendon’s van was a distant memory in the rear view mirror.

Tracy placed her hand on my shoulder. “Mike.” She said pleadingly. BT sat quietly in the back. A few more shades lighter and he would be able to get into some of the finer country clubs in the area. A tire blow out now would most likely send us into the Guinness book of records for most barrel rolls. Well as a kid I had always wanted to get into that book of oddities. Probably for something more mundane like how many pieces of bubble gum I could chew and not necessarily for being the world’s largest rolling meat grinder. My foot eased off the accelerator. I had placed so much force on my right leg trying to press the gas pedal into the floorboard that I was now in the unenviable process of trying to alleviate a charley horse while also keeping this missile on the straight and narrow.

Even with Brendon traveling at a steady 70 miles per hour, I was out of the van and massaging my offending calf before Brendon even came into sight on the horizon.

“Jesus Mike, what the hell are you doing?” Jen asked as she came out of the van.

I looked over to Brendon he looked strained. Pushing the non-aerodynamic brick down the highway at speeds he didn’t feel comfortable with had made him break out in a sweat.

“Sorry man.” I said to him.

“It’s nothing.” He lied as he pulled his fingers off the steering wheel.

“Dad, you don’t look good.” Nicole said with concern.

Justin smiled from the rear seat in the van.

“It doesn’t matter.” I said bleakly.

“What doesn’t matter Mike?” Tracy asked as she came up beside me.

“All of this, none of this. No matter how hard we run, no matter where we go, they’ll still come. They’ll come a time, no matter what I do, I won’t be able to stop them from taking you, any of you.”

“Mike, it’s not just you.” (I wasn’t going to add this part but it’s part of the story and it only scratches on the outer corners of breaking the man-code.) BT said tenderly. He had come out and was actually giving me a hug. “We’re in this together. We’ll look out for each other. I would no sooner let anything happen to any of your kin than I would let something happen to myself.”

He was big enough to be my dad when I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, the proportion was correct. I lived that lie for a few more seconds as I collected my despair, and didn’t so much dispose of it as try and compartmentalize it. I could tell it was surging and would soon leak from under the door of my makeshift compartment and probably out through the keyhole but for now I had gained a measure of composure and was once again ready to face the world, for the most part.

“Tracy, you want to drive?” I asked her. It was then I think everyone must have thought I had finally given up.

“What? My knee is killing me.”

“Uh huh.” BT said as he got back into the van.

That was mostly true, but there was still a part of me that might have relished the thought of screaming off the road at a buck twenty and plowing into a utility pole. I would not give my pursuers that satisfaction. Someone was going to catch a lot of lead for pushing me this hard, and maybe an arrow or two for good measure.

Tracy drove well, which in itself was something of a feat. Normally the only way she got behind the wheel with me in the car was when I was entirely too inebriated or had suffered one of my many varied injuries. Under either circumstance I didn’t give a rat’s ass on how she got me to where we were going. I can’t even begin to relate to you in this narrative how many times the kids had come home from somewhere where their mom had driven them and had horror stories about this and that person being cut off, semi’s turning over and small planes bursting into flame. I think there was even something in there about a dam busting but that might possibly have been an over-exaggeration. I dozed in and out of a fitful sleep. My mood fluctuating between pissed off at my lot in life and happy that I wasn’t being pissed on. Basically varying degrees of suckydom.

Tracy kept to a geriatric pace off 55ish, it wasn’t that the conditions merited the reduction in speed, I’m just not so sure how willing she was to get to where we were going. It’s all great in the abstract. ‘I’m going to save my mom!’ but when you get down to the nitty gritty and you realize that you haven’t heard anything in weeks from your 79 year old mom, who lives alone on a farm in North Dakota in one of the coldest winters in recorded history during an outbreak of zombieism, well that reality begins to make a weight of its own. Like a dying star, it creates it’s own mass and sucks everything, including your inner light, into it. The odds were about as great as winning the lottery, that we would find Carol, hale of health.

“You want me to take over driving?” I asked her.

Tracy turned to me. Grim determination and concern mixed in with a heavy dose of anxiety spilled out of her features. “Do you mind? I don’t feel right driving without you bleeding.” We both laughed, the tiny little release of endorphins was like a surge of adrenaline to my flagging spirits.

Ten minutes later and a bunch of potty breaks we were back on the road. The natural order of the universe was restored as I cruised down the highway at a more respectable 75mph. Any faster than that and the Terrible Teal machine began to shudder in protest. How I had got this bucket to 120 was beyond my comprehension.

My stomach grumbled as we passed one of those blue highway information signs. You know the kind that tell you gas, food and lodging are up ahead. This one had the big ‘M’ logo for McDonalds on it. A quarter pounder with cheese, large fries and a thirst quenching Coke sounded like the best thing in the world.

“Oh man I could go for a juicy quarter pounder, aw man with that dripping cheese and sesame seed bun. I’d put a layer of golden French fries on top of the cheese and I’d eat that thing in like a minute in a half.” I know Henry understood what I was talking about because his head was tilted and he had a little drivel coming out of his maw. I scratched his head. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you my good boy.” His small tail wagged vigorously, the better to disperse the deadly gas that exuded from his kiester. “Henry! You’re ruining my fantasy.” I said. The van swerved as I did my best to find the electric window control. I was frantic, the edges of my vision were beginning to blur as I held on tight to the only good air within breathable proximity.

“Oh God, Talbot! Did you run over a zombie?” BT said sitting bolt upright from his nap. Not a pleasant way to return to the world of the awoken. “I can’t breathe.” He hitched.

Tommy smiled as he stuffed a marshmallow up his nose. “Iths noth so badth.”

Tracy once again saved the day as all the windows in the van simultaneously rolled down. Brendon’s van swayed slightly as they passed through the toxic cloud that leaked out from our van. I’d freeze to death before I had to breathe in another piece of Henry’s airified excrement. It was another two or three miles before the last remnants of Henry’s oily feculence made rolling the windows up a doable possibility. It still smelled like dirty feet and burnt Fritos but it was passable. All thoughts of food had been wiped cleanly from my mind.

But again back to the basics, I’m a guy. If not in survival mode (and then sometimes even then) my mind has about three factors that contend with each other. Hunker down ladies because if you’re reading this with your man in some safe zone. I am about to give you all the knowledge you will ever need. If ten thoughts were to pass through your man’s mind it would look like this: sex, sex, sex, food, sex, sex, football, sex, food, sleep, sex. (Did you count? I really put down 11 thoughts. Yup, that’s how important sex is to us.) We’ll only sleep if you’re not offering sex or a sandwich. All that other bullshit we used to do in our ‘regular’ lives, like going to work, or painting the bathroom, or going to the fucking art museum, or seeing ANY chick flick, we did that so we could POSSIBLY get into your pants. Plain and simple. I don’t at this point see any reason to mince words. We love sex in all its pure and depraved forms. Why this most basic of all animalistic rituals has thus far mostly eluded the feminine persuasion is beyond me. I would clean gutters in a hail storm, in my underwear at midnight, if it meant I MIGHT get to have sex. (I’d do all of the above BUT in my regular clothes for an awesome Philly Cheese steak.) And that my dear lady survivors is ALL you will ever need to know about that big, dumb, hairy animal snoring next to you. Sorry guys, I didn’t mean to let the cat out of the bag, but rapid procreation might be the only way we can stave off extinction.

“Don’t you remember what happened the last time you went to McDonald’s?” Tracy asked circling back to my initial intercourse. (Doesn’t seem like the right word to use here, but somehow it does.)

“What about…oh yeah.” I answered.

CHAPTER 16 – THE CUT AWAY

It was a brutally hot day in July when I had received my layoff notice. I had called Tracy to let her know that she needed to stop the order we had put in for the hot tub in the backyard. I could ‘feel’ the tension and anger that she emitted right through the phone. “Fine.” She had answered me in the curt tone that drove me friggen nuts. (In a bad way.)

“Everything alright?” I asked like an idiot.

“Everything’s peachy.” She had replied. (Just so you know ‘peachy’ means anything but.) “The kids want McDonalds for dinner, and Nicole and Brendon are over.”

Now was not the time but I wanted to tell her that maybe we should start to tighten the belt up a little. “The usual?” I asked abashed.

“What do you think?” She said, and then she hung up.

I would have smashed my phone against a wall if I had the income to replace it. I was screaming in my head. ‘FUCK does she think I fired myself! Yeah it must be all my FUCKEN fault!’ It was with this attitude that I rolled on up to the McDonalds drive thru. You kind of see where this is going? Okay just a little backfill so you can really get a grasp of where I’m coming from. During my Marine Corps days I worked on an airfield and because of this I had lost no small measure of my hearing. Couple that with a cheap ass speaker system at any fast food drive thru and we were already in the midst of a communication barrier. Add to the fact that on that fateful night, Samir from the great republic of India had just got off a plane from his native country and had begun working the ‘hole’ as they call the place where your drive thru order is taken.

The dialog you are about to read is ‘After’ I had put my order in for the third time, and Samir had botched it for the third time.

“No listen! I want a fucking quarter pounder with cheese AND FUCKING extra pickles!”

“You would like a cheeseburger with no cheese then sir?”

“Are you fucking with me?” I was near screaming. “A fucking cheeseburger without cheese is a hamburger, where the fuck are you from?” Although it would have been impossible not to tell where he was from, unless of course you have not used ANY customer support line in the last 5 years.

“I am from Bangladesh sir.”

“You don’t say?! Listen, I want a quarter pounder with cheese and extra pickles.”

“Okay a large French fried with mustard then?”

“Do you smoke crack, Babacunousch?”

“Samir sir.”

“What?”

My name is Samir, sir. And no I have never smoked anything sir.”

“Oh for the love of all that is holy.”

“Would you like to pray sir?”

I just wanted to back the car up and drive forward, running over the speaker. I couldn’t stop looking at the box like it and not money was the root of all evil in the world.

“Sir I have your order for four Mint McShakes, 2 small Dr. Pepper’s. A cheeseburger with no cheese, two quarter pounders with cheese one with extra onions and one without buns, a girl toy chicken mcnugget happy meal with apple slices, and 2 Big McMacs and 18 super sized frenched fries with mustard.”

Not one order, not one fucking order was right. I had nothing left, Samir had beat me.

“Is that not correct sir?” When I did not answer him, he finished. “That will be $52.75 sir.”

I was numb as I pulled my car up to the first window, groping for my wallet. The next car in the growing line pulled up to the box, even from this distance, I could hear that I had in no way been singled out.

“NO! Not a McFlurrie with bacon!”

I pulled up to the first window, hoping beyond hope that I would find an ally to help me through these troubling times. Pimply faced ‘Becka’ was not going to be that person. She was busy talking to, I believe, ‘Tonya’ about what a jerk some guy named Spence was, through her Bluetooth headset.

She didn’t so much as look at me when she fairly demanded the money. “That’s 52.75, oh my gawd he’s the biggest jerk ever.”

“Excuse me miss?”

“So then he says to me, ‘Did you see what Darla was wearing?’ And I’m like why would I care what that bee-itch had on.” She rethrust her hand out seeking something I wasn’t willing to entrust to her.

“Excuse me miss?” I asked again, I would have had an easier time getting a response from Samir. I shuddered at that thought.

When Becka realized that I hadn’t paid yet, she finally looked at me with that condescending teenager look that says I know everything and why are you still breathing? Don’t you have a coffin to fill? (I hate teenage girls, is there any species more foreign on this planet?)

“That’s 52.75.” She said again, this time with less veneer. Not that she was laying the ‘nice’ on too heavy to begin with.

“Miss, I had some problems with the drive through.”

Apparently Tonya came back with some profound insight, because Becka once again completely forgot that I existed. “I know right?!” She replied.

How could Samir all of a sudden become the good employee in all of this? At least he paid me attention even if he had no clue.

“Yeah so then I sort of…oh wait Tonya.” She said turning to me again. “This guy is at my window and won’t leave. Yeah I don’t think he has any money. Oh Gross Tonya! No he’s not cute, he’s like 65 or something.”

Did she think I couldn’t hear her end of the conversation? Did she care? 65? And I am kind of cute…aren’t I? Why am I letting Becka make me doubt everything that I am? The human-ego is very delicate, more like a thin-skinned tomato than the hardy coconut. It can be bruised easily with little more than some mishandling.

“Miss.” I said. “My order isn’t right.”

“Hold on Tonya. Didn’t you just make it at the speaker? Gad Tonya some of these people can be such dolts.” She finished, looking straight at me.

Did she think she was texting? This couldn’t be happening, could it? I was on Punked or something. Someone must be making a YouTube video. “Where’s the camera?” I asked in the hopes that this was some masterful prank and not the true state of the world.

“No he’s still here. I think he may be a ‘tard’.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? What is your problem.” Bruised ego or not, there was only so much I could take.

“Geez there’s no reason to get all hostile and stuff, it’s not my fault you couldn’t make your order right the first time.”

I would have peeled away leaving a trail of rubber, but that’s not really a specialty of Jeeps. I did drive away from the window and I did entertain the thought of just leaving and trying my luck at Burger King. Odds were today though that I would encounter more of the same. Had I the clairvoyance to have checked my horoscope this morning I would have known how this day was going to turn out. It read just one word ‘HIDE’.

If I went home now, empty handed, Tracy would make Becka’s mishandling of my ego seem like a feather’s caress. Nearly every fiber of my being revolted at the thought of going into the lion’s den. I parked the car, stepped out and onto five or six ketchup packets that had been strategically placed for just this effect. Red sticky liquid nearly made it to the knee of my tan Dockers, my expensive Italian leather shoes looking like I had just followed OJ through a crime scene. Ronald mocked me with his feral grin sitting on his bench all smug and self-centered.

Two of the largest women I had ever seen in my life nearly bowled me over as I tried to gain entrance into the inner sanctum of absurdity. Twins they were, but not of the ‘doublemint’ variety. One was swathed in head to toe spandex. Anything resembling my appetite was lost. Her sister had on a skirt that struggled for all it was worth to stay attached at the seams. The skirt barely covered massive varicose stained thighs. It looked like the world’s most detailed map had been tattooed on her, but I really had my doubts that it led to anything resembling treasure.

“Oh he looks good enough to eat.” I heard one of the sisters mutter to the other.

The other sister, placed her hand to her mouth and tittered. She looked about as dainty as a hippo.

Like I said though, egos are fragile and tender. As easily as they can be broken they can be propped up. Now I wouldn’t touch either one of these girls with a stick to see if they were alive, but still, at least one of them thought I was cute. Does ‘good enough to eat’ equal cute? It did in my world.

“Ladies.” I said with my cheesiest grin as I held the door open. This time they both tittered. I felt magnanimous. I didn’t have the slightest clue then, that in just a few short months from now I was going to expend a magazine of high caliber rounds into each corpulent sibling.

It was with this much-improved demeanor that I walked into the restaurant and up to the counter. My mood was only slightly diminished as I felt the tackiness of my red sauce covered shoe as it tried to adhere itself to the less than sanitary flooring. One young harried mother was at the counter ordering, two of her children were running around like they had just sucked down a couple of Red Bulls. Her third child was busy picking up errant French fries that had ended up on the deck. I cringed as she placed these ‘floor prizes’ into her mouth.

“Lexus!” She screamed. “Stop that I’m ordering your supper right now!”

Wait so she wasn’t upset that ‘Lexus’ was eating food off of a disgusting floor, but rather that she would ruin her appetite? Lexus didn’t heed her mother’s words as she placed another dirt encrusted something into her mouth, I don’t think it was a French fry, but I tell myself that it was, so that I can make it through the day without dry-heaving. The germaphobe in me would have had to disown this kid if she was mine.

“Lexus, Mercedes, Fred come on! I’ve got Happy Meals.” The young mother yelled.

All three stopped, even Lexus with what appeared to be the mid-section of a cockroach halfway to her mouth. The offending insect was discarded and rapidly forgotten as Lexus screamed merrily about getting a princess toy. My earlier merriment was completely destroyed as I stepped up to the counter. A sad faced man named Don (The shift supervisor), greeted me. I was to learn rather quickly that Don’s day had pretty much paralleled my own (except for the part about losing his job, but that part would come later after I left.)

“Sir how may I help you?” Don asked. Doing his best to hold on to what little remained of his dignity.

I’m not proud of some of the things I have done in my life. You could count this encounter as one of them. I am one of those people that is quick to anger and then let slide something that should have never left my brain to begin with. Quick to react, slow to think. Unfortunately this was something my Nicole had picked up on early in life. She would scream bloody murder and I would come running. Justin usually became the hapless victim in this game as I would punish him before I even knew what was going on. If my daughter wrote that story she could probably call it, ‘The Manipulation of Michael Talbot’. And then the worst part of this whole affair would be the swallowing of my pride and then admitting to my son that I was wrong. This was a shortcoming that had been a work in progress with me for years. That day I slid a long way back down the progress path.

Maybe it was the way he looked so pathetic, like he had already given up, that made me act the way I did. Maybe it was a baser evolutionary thing like the strong dominating the weak. I’m not saying I was right or trying to justify my actions, I’m just making an observation. You can be the judge if you want. But remember, I had just lost my job, my wife was pissed at me, it was 102 degrees out, Samir and his partner in crime Becka had conspired to make my trip to a fast food restaurant into an epic adventure worthy of any M. Night Shyamalan movie. I had ketchup half way up my pants. My expensive shoes were ruined. A giant fat lady wanted to eat me. I had just witnessed the singular most disgusting culinary experience in my life and now Don the Defeated was going to champion my cause? I think not.

All of this was going through my head as I formulated my reply to Don. “Fuck you!” Yep that’s how I started off. Proud? Not a chance. Don’s demeanor dipped even a little farther, but I thought I caught a glimpse of something else. I think my words sparked a flame of defiance in him.

“Sir?” He asked incredulously. Don’s day had been shit thus far, but I was the first to cross the usually uncrossable unseen civilized barrier.

I knew in my heart of hearts that ‘fuck you’ was as inappropriate a response as I could go with, except maybe something about his mother. But again my emotions were ruling my higher functioning. So when I told him to ‘Go fuck himself!’ I had once again taken a giant step against mankind. I’ll give it to the guy though he wasn’t quite ready to throw the towel in yet and step down into the primordial soup with me.

“Sir, if you could just please keep your voice down and keep the language more appropriate I think we can resolve whatever problem you may be having.”

At this point my loftier self was actually able to step away from the situation and take a more objective look at what was happening here. Some ketchup stained guy, that appears to have just smoked some bad crack comes into a family oriented restaurant throwing profanity around like a hooker throws pussy around at a dentist convention. That Don hadn’t gone screaming into the rear of the store looking for a weapon was a testament to his inner strength, OR more likely I wasn’t the first person that had come in after dealing with the dynamic duo of dipshits at the drive thru.

His words were actually having the desired effect. He had not escalated the confrontation. The more time he was giving me to reflect on my actions the better able I was to bridle my mental state, such as it was. I actually might have been able to salvage this encounter, if Becka’s pimply-faced countenance hadn’t taken this inopportune time to peek out from her workstation.

“Oh shit Tonya. The half-wit came in the store! You should see his clothes, he looks like he’s eaten but couldn’t tell exactly where his mouth was. I know right?’ She laughed. “He’s got ketchup all down his legs! It’s hilarious, Tonya. Hold on I’m going to take a picture and send it to you.”

Becka began to walk out from behind her work window, her phone lining up to take my most unflattering photograph since the DMV.

“Becka.” Don began. “Don’t you have some work you could be doing?”

‘Oh please’ her expression dripped. The sour look did little to dissuade Becka from her present course of action. I was too shocked to do anything as Becka took not one but three pictures of me. I heard that at least two of them ended up on the internet.

Don and I both shared a moment of commiseration as we stared at the retreating form of the laughing Becka. “I’m sending it now Tonya, let me know when you get it! GET OUT!” She shrieked. “Bobby Ricci asked you out!” The rest of the stimulating teenage-ese dialog was lost to us, as Don and I again resumed our parley.

“You could start helping me, by firing her.” I pointed vehemently to where the demon spawn had retreated.

“She’s the best of the last seven people I’ve had working there” Don answered me back, his tone laced with dejection.

And like that the heat of my anger ebbed, Don was as much if not more of a victim in this whole affair than I was. He had been dealing with irate customers seemingly his entire professional life.

“Samir.” One of the fry cooks shouted from behind us. “What the hell is a fried salad wrap with M&M’s?”

Don put his hands over his face. If he had access to anything sharper than a plastic butter knife I think he would have taken the opportunity to perform hari-kari on himself.

I wanted this encounter to be over with and out of here before it got any more bizarre. Sometimes I amaze myself with my flashes of prophecy. “Listen.” I said hopefully. “I just want to get my order and get out of here.” Don didn’t respond, I somehow took that as a good sign. “Ok.” I said nervously licking my lips. “I’d like to get two quarter pounders with cheese meals, a crispy chicken sandwich meal, two big Mac meals, and the two cheeseburger meal with extra pickles. Oh yeah and all of them with coke is fine.” Don still hadn’t moved, not to even put my order into the not-so-idiot proof picture laden register. At first I was sort of impressed that he would have the ability to memorize my whole order. Still nothing was happening. “Don?” I asked cautiously.

“YOU WANT! YOU WANT! What the fuck about what I want!” He screamed. The entire restaurant stopped and stared, even the nearly useless work staff. “You think I want to manage a bunch of zit pocked, hormone infused, spoiled brats that would rather be at home jerking off than making an honest living? And do you think I can get any of them to wash their hands after they’re in the bathroom for a half an hour doing God knows what?” I heard distant retching as one of the customers realized what they might be eating. One of the sandwich assemblers laughed out loud as he realized that he had just been called out. I noticed with disdain, the nearly full box of sani-gloves next to his workstation that were going completely unused.

Customers began to leave in droves as if they could sense the oncoming explosion, why had my prophetic self picked this time to desert. Of my entire order why he focused on this part I’ll never know.

“You want some extra fucking pickles!” He yelled.

I nodded dumbly. Eyes wide open along with my gaping mouth.

“I’ve got your fucking extra pickles right here!”

I can’t express to you how relieved I was when he didn’t pull his pants down and expose his ‘male pickle’ to me. My respite was short lived though as he picked up a ten pound jar of pickle slices and began to hum handfuls of the tangy sandwich slices at me. I stood dumbfounded as the rippled briny preserves slapped against my entire body, I guess I should be glad they were the sandwich slice variety as opposed to the spears. (Poor joke, I know but how much further into absurdity could I travel.) I walked out of the store under a hail of fire, slices stuck to my face, neck and head. The sun began to instantly brown them as I dazedly strode to my car. I cannot recall the rest of the ride home. It wasn’t until I walked in the back door and Tracy ‘greeted’ me, that the day began to come back into focus.

“Where’s the food?” She shot out, her initial anger at my becoming unemployed still highly evident. As she began to look closer at the near comatose expression on my face, the ketchup on my pants and shoes and the pickle slices that dripped to the floor that her demeanor changed. “Oh Talbot how do you get into these messes?” I would have aimlessly argued that I had nothing to do with it, but her ensuing laughter was like the siren call to sailors of lore. I joined in with her wholeheartedly. After heavy moments of out-of-control laughter we locked into a vinegar infused kiss that temporarily made all of our earthly concerns melt away. For twenty beats of my heart, the entire day had been worth the pay out.

CHAPTER 17

“You’re probably right.” I said answering her original question back in the here and now. But I still looked longingly at the rapidly departing, true King of Hamburgers. My heavy sigh, went unnoticed or ignored didn’t really matter which, I wasn’t getting any golden bronzed dipped in sunlight French fries no matter how much I pouted.

We were still hours away from Carol’s and the weakened winter sunlight was doing its best to retreat into the west ahead of the frigid night. We had some choices, none of them particularly grand. We could push on through the night and get to Carol’s in the blackest part of the evening. My feelings were that entering into that nightmare during the brightest part of the day might make it minutely more palatable. So we could cross off option number one. Number two consisted of pulling off to the shoulder of the road and sleeping in the car, one look at the depleted gas tank gauge revealed that we would not be able to keep the car and subsequently the heater running for the entire night. Of the ‘choices’ we were contending with, we would have to pick the one that was the least unsavory. That doesn’t mean it was a good choice, just better than the rest. It’s like the choice to eat chocolate covered ants or caviar. They’re both choices but they both suck. Kind of like having to vote for either candidate in a presidential race, no matter which way you go you’re guaranteed taxes will increase and the winner will blame the losing parties ineptitude for the necessity of the increase.

Option three involved pulling off the highway, getting some much needed gas and finding some sort of safe haven to sleep the night away. Our luck at safe havens had been largely devoid these last few nights. I had my doubts that would turn around tonight. I pulled the van over and waited for Brendon to come up alongside. I laid out all my thoughts, hoping that someone might potentially have a better idea or possibly dissuade me from my present course of action. I’m a control freak in the strongest sense of the phrase but only in so far as a situation can be controlled. I’ve yet to come across a zombie that ‘heeled’ when I told it to.

“How long would it take to get to Mom’s?” Tracy asked with a strange mixture of hope and resignation.

“Shit maybe four hours.” I said rubbing my eyes. “I’m exhausted though and we’ll still need to pull over somewhere and get gas.”

“What about finding a motel or something like that?” Brendon asked. “We could stay on the second floor, there’s usually only one or two stair cases that we would have to defend.”

What he omitted, probably unintentionally is that one or two staircases meant only one or two escape avenues. Our lives depended on me always keeping vigilant. But it was still a decent idea. We had to stop, that was not the issue. We might as well be as comfortable as humanly possible, while we were still humans.

The stress I felt everyone exuding was tangible. It had a texture, a thickness to it. When we were moving we were safe. Every time we stopped the danger caught up to us. Only Justin and Tommy thought stopping was a good idea.

My hope was that Justin wanted to stop to give his low grade fever a chance to dissipate, I would not dwell any longer on any wild theories that I could not prove, but could still feel, in the depths of my soul. Damn him, the warring factions in myself were mere children throwing stones to what was going on in his head. He might be the biggest threat to all of our survivals and he was my son. My soul wept, my essence raged, nothing changed.

“Ryan says something about a lantern being on.” Tommy said his eyebrows pinched in a frown as he tried to make sense of his ‘seers’ words.

You could hear a pin drop or Jen peeing a few feet away, you decide which descriptor fits. They were both accurate if not both politically correct. However I don’t think this was going to be on any ACLU docket in the foreseeable future.

“What’d I miss?” Jen asked as she came back wiping her hands in the snow.

BT gave her the short version. “Brendon thinks we should stay at a motel and Tommy says there’s a street light on somewhere.”

She looked as confused as the rest of us, but she recovered a lot faster than any of us. She leaned her head into the minivan.”

“Hi Tommy.” Jen said with a smile. Tommy blushed. “Whatcha got there?”

“Triple berry pop-tart with peanut butter frosting.” He said proudly.

“Dad.” Travis entreated. “You said we were out of pop-tarts.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Wait.” Now I leaned my head into the minivan. “Did you say peanut butter frosting?”

“Uh huh.” Tommy said, shifting uncomfortably as he noticed that everyone was looking at him.

“Did you spread peanut butter on your pop-tart Tommy?” I asked.

He looked at me like I was crazy. His eyes rolled as he answered me. “We don’t even have any peanut butter Mr. T.”

“But pop-tarts never made a peanut butter frosted variety Tommy.” I intoned.

“Oh forget the pop-tarts Talbot.” Jen hushed me.

(I let it go then but I haven’t forgotten about them yet and I can guarantee when the savage vestiges of Alzheimer’s are rendering my mind into brain flavored oat meal and I am slinging my own shit against the walls that I’ll remember triple berry pop-tarts with peanut butter frosting. Oh you dear reader can be assured that after Jen got her answers I checked that pop-tart out and it was indeed the flavor he described. Not that the kid had ever lied but maybe he got confused. He hadn’t.)

“Okay let me get this straight, Brendon says ‘motel’ and Tommy says ‘street light is on’, right?” Jen asked.

Nicole clarified with. “Lantern, he said a lantern was on, not a street light.”

“Let’s go, we’ve got a motel to find.” Jen said with a huge smile on her face.

“Um any chance you could let the rest of us know what mystery you figured out?” BT asked.

“Come on in, we’ll leave the light on for you.” Jen beamed.

“Huh?” BT asked.

Tommy around mouthfuls of an impossibly flavored snack nodded fervently in agreement.

“The old Motel 6 catch phrase.” I wrapped up.

“Exactly.” Jen said. “Let’s go I’m freezing.”

Nobody needed any more persuading than that.

Within twenty minutes we came up on a viable choice for our overnight stay, even if there wasn’t a Dunkin’ Donuts. Beresford South Dakota was about to become our home away from home, at least for the night. It was by far the prettiest place we had stopped thus far in our journey, with its tree lined streets and the pond in the center of town. But pretty doesn’t equate to safe. It was a given that zombies travel to where the food is. So by pure theory alone small towns should be the first places to become devoid of the offending vermin. Like flesh eating locusts, they plunder and pillage the local resources and move on. They don’t hunker down and make roots. Can’t really cultivate a human farm, can you? And then I shuddered as I thought about The Matrix. Okay, but that was about machines harvesting humans for energy. If I come across penned up humans with zombie cowboys, my tentative grip on the fringes of sanity will be forever frayed. I shook my head, trying my best to dislodge the offending vision. Like this shit isn’t bad enough I’ve got to try and drum up even more exciting scenarios. ‘Ah what I’d do for a nuclear bomb.’

“A nuclear what?” My wife asked. Her contortion of fear was clearly outlined.

“Did I say that out loud?” I asked, clearly confused. When had I last let the inner thoughts of my unkempt mind out for all to see? My inner trappings were not a pretty place and I always made a careful case to make sure that my mind was shuttered against even the most curious onlookers. Tracy had long ago learned to not try and find out what I was thinking. My sometimes candid answers more often than not left her confused, concerned and just plain weirded out. Honest to God, I used to think that everybody thought the way I did, and were just as good at hiding it as I was. That however wasn’t the case. My depths of paranoia, conspiracy and psychosis approached and most likely surpassed levels that should have been medicated away. But it was these same ‘malfunctions’ of my mind that had my family thus far safe and sound. If I had really been able to ‘realize’ my dream though we would be riding this out in style in some giant underground shelter. I envy all of you that had the resources to pull that off.

“Look the light is on!” Tommy said excitedly.

And it was. The chill of icy fingers that ran up my spine was back and it was corpse cold. I shuddered involuntarily. Nobody but Tommy saw good in the stupid little hundred-watt bulb, shining bright through the twilight.

“How is that light still on Talbot?” BT asked in hushed tones, with a note of reverence in his voice.

“There’s a machine with Kit-Kats in there, do you have any change Mr. T?” Tommy asked hopefully.

It’s amazing to me that all of us had known Tommy long enough that nobody even looked halfway cross-eyed at him at his pronouncement. If Tommy had said that a convention of clowns respite with balloon animals was in there singing Billy Joel songs, we would all have believed him. Of course I wouldn’t have gone in, clowns are evil, but I still would have believed him.

I pulled into the parking lot. Brendon wisely remained on the street in the event that he needed to make a quick getaway. A few more years of exposure to me and he would be completely infected with my derangement. I was like a proud papa watching his baby take his first steps.

“What are you doing Talbot?” BT leaned in to me and asked, still in that hushed tone.

I wanted to let him know that zombies were more olfactory stimulated than auditory but then I remembered that there were other demons out there that still went bump in the night. Durgan invaded my thoughts for a moment. I snuffed the thought before it could grow. My mind malignancy could not get past the thought that something was amiss here. Zombies are notorious dark dwellers, relying on smell mostly to track down their prey. Odds of zombies being around were about 10%. Next on my list were bad guys, your average low life. Mad Max types, take whatever you will and destroy the rest. Again this is a relatively small percentage, maybe 10% also. This type, while very dangerous, doesn’t lie in wait. They go out and seek to take. Okay next came just regular folks doing their best to survive. I hate to keep beating a dead horse but this is also a small percentage, I’ll stick with the 10%. I might not be the greatest role model for this example but I can guarantee I wouldn’t be hanging a ‘We’re Open’ shingle out on my front door. Now we have our garden variety bad guy, using a lure to bring in some unsuspecting slobs. This percentage was considerably higher than the others, maybe 20%. But unless you carried your own personal physician with you, inviting trouble was not always a viable advantage. It was still early enough in the apocalypse that supplies were fairly abundant. Food, clothes and ammo were everywhere. Zombies had little use for them and by this time outnumbered humans thousands to one. So what was in small supply and would become a high trade commodity? Women, God damn it, it always comes down to women. The bane of our existence and our small party contained three of the golden ones. Okay that 20% might go up.

Now this part is something I’ve let very few people know. That’s a lie. I’ve let nobody know. This, I’ve come to learn is a huge character flaw in myself. I don’t want to change it and I recognize it for what it is. It’s the inability to reach out and help those in need. I don’t feel the altruistic requirement to help people. Now I’ll die for my family or my friends if the demands require it. I’ve risked my neck for the men I’ve fought next to and even for people that I’ve been tentatively tethered too, think Cash. But I will not go out of my way to help those in need. I’m blown away by the people that used to go to Africa and try to help populations dying from starvation. My first response was always, ‘What is their ulterior motive?’ Yeah, there’s the cynic in me rearing its grotesque head. Doctors and nurses could only be in it for the money, rich people giving to charities was for tax purposes, actors donating time to build houses, free publicity. So the thought that some people were in that motel wanting to help others was by and far the largest percentage of probability and it was easily the most difficult for me to reconcile in my mind.

I looked over my right shoulder as I backed out of the parking lot. Tommy looked like I had just run over a family of rabbits with a lawnmower.

“Did I tell you about the Kit-Kats, Mr. T?” Tommy lamented.

“What are you doing Talbot?” Tracy asked, she hated to see the distress in Tommy.

“Hedging my bets.” Was my terse reply.

“Against what?” Tracy asked. “What’s going on?” She had inklings of how deep my disturbed waters ran and for the most part made sure that she didn’t wade too far from shore. But since this whole undertaking had begun she had started to indulge me more and more. I felt sadness that she would someday swim in the turmoil I mired in daily but that was beyond my control for now.

I parked next to Brendon on the road without telling anyone. I grabbed my gun and got out. “Tra..” She was already moving into the driver’s seat.

“Hold on Talbot I’m coming with you.” BT said, as he fumbled with his seat belt, the material looked stretched to its capacity around his immense bulk.

“Hold on BT, I know that you’re a big sweetheart.” He grumbled. “But any poor folks in there are going to look at you like a raging T-Rex.” He took no umbrage to my words. A small smile may have passed his lips. It was difficult to tell in the fading sunlight.

Travis was halfway out the door. I stopped him too. “Not this time champ.” I motioned for him to get back in the car.

“Talbot let’s just go.” Tracy entreated.

“Go where? I haven’t given up on this place I’m just not 100% convinced yet.” I answered.

“How convinced are you?” Tracy asked. She had not been expecting an answer, so when I came back with 50-50. She understandably didn’t know whether to be troubled or thankful.

I took that one calming breath that really doesn’t do anything except focus you on the fact you are about to do something foolhardy or dangerous, or a combination of the two. All eyes watched me as I slowly approached the motel. Halfway across the parking lot my concern came to fruition in the form of a green laser dot painted plainly on my chest.

“Dad why’d you stop?” Travis asked. His voice rang out too loudly in the unaccountable quiet. I hesitated to turn and tell him. I slowly raised my arms in the universal gesture of ‘Don’t put a cavernous hole in my body.’

“Oh fuck.” I heard from a multitude of mouths behind me. I concurred with them completely. I heard multiple car doors open or slide, the cavalry was on the way.

“Make them stop or you’ll be on the ground before you hear the shot.” The disembodied voice said softly for my ears only. It seemed to be coming from above and to the left of me, but I wasn’t willing to bet my life on that fact.

“STOP!” I said loudly. “He says that if you keep coming, he’ll kill me.” The sheer quantity of guns I heard being cocked behind me at least gave me the slight satisfaction in knowing that my death would be avenged ten-fold.

“What’s your business here?” The voice came again, and now I was willing to put some more stock in the premise of his location.

Odds were though he wasn’t the only one on this field of play. No chance this was a laser device from a tape measure. Those were only of the red variety. Green lasers were much more powerful and generally included only on tactical weapons. Would I feel the splintering of my chest plate as it first contorted to accept the intruding projectile and then shattered around the bullet? Would my heart burst as the bullet tore through it, like so many watermelons I had shot? And if I was somehow still alive after all that damage to myself would I be able to register the paralysis my body suffered as my spinal column was severed in two? Would it be better to be shot with a full metal jacketed bullet that would strike small and leave a fist sized opening in my back? Or with a traditional lead round that would mushroom immediately upon impact thus allowing it to damage more vital organs as it crushed to a stop halfway through my being? Maybe a low velocity round that would hit somewhere center mass and tumble through my body only to find a hasty exit through my orbital socket? It was a gruesome picture I was painting. I truly wished I wasn’t the model for it.

I answered my captor’s question honestly. “My business is to not get shot.” I wasn’t expecting a laugh when I answered him but that’s exactly what I received.

“I think that’s all of our businesses.” I could tell from his tone he enjoyed the response. But his prior wariness, if it had diminished at all, was only by a negligent amount. “I would feel more comfortable if you put that weapon on the ground.” He said to me.

I wasn’t really in a negotiable place, but what the hell. “And I’d feel more comfortable if I wasn’t painted with a laser. It’s a little unsettling.”

“Well that’s the point isn’t it?”

Great I got to deal with a realist.

“Okay you put that gun down, I’ll take the laser off of you but you do realize I’m not the only one that has a bead on you and your traveling party.”

I had figured enough about me. Realizing my family was an errant mosquito bite away from coming under fire was almost more than I could bear. My body shook with rage, my soul quaked with fear. I gently placed my A.R. on the ground. “Alright I’ve held up my end of the agreement.” The laser unwaveringly still dissected my body. I could hear what sounded like a muffled high intensity argument. Seemed to me someone was very adamant about not having guests. That I was waiting patiently for someone else to decide my fate was not sitting well. I carefully eyed my rifle and got busy deciding how quick I could pick it up and at least go out in a Blaze of Glory.

“Don’t even think about it.” The same voice warned me.

“Too late.” I said. He laughed again. Fuckers have night vision goggles. I felt slightly envious and more than a little pissed at myself that I hadn’t thought to pick some of those gems up. I’m sure Dick’s sporting goods would have had some. Not of the military grade but something better than my impotent human vision. Odds were we would have picked this ambush up long before I stumbled my ass across the parking lot. More hushed skirmishing ensued. I had half a mind, the crazier half to be sure, to tell them to hurry up. Holding my arms over my head like this was killing my shoulders. No reason to poke a hornet’s nest though, they don’t even make honey.

After what seemed like indeterminable minutes the arguing had stopped. Who won? The ones that wanted to kill us all outright, or the ones that wanted to kill just the men outright?

“Alright I want you to tell all those people behind you to put their weapons down and come forward with their hands up.” The voice said all business like.

I didn’t need to ponder my response in the slightest. “No.” I’d wished I had those goggles now just to see his expression.

“I don’t think you understood me.” He shot back, with words thankfully.

“Oh I understood you just fine. I’m just not doing what you asked.” Impudence didn’t seem like the right tact but there I was rattling off at the mouth again with reckless abandon.

“We can kill you where you stand. You get that, right?”

“I get that utterly and completely and that is why under no circumstances will I drag my family and friends into your killing zone.”

More hushed arguing. “I’m putting my arms down. My shoulders are killing me.” I yelled.

“Slowly! And do not make a move for that gun!”

“Fine, fine!” I yelled back as I dropped my outstretched hands down and began to rub blood back into my numbed arms.

More hushed brawling ensued. Obviously no succinct chain of command here, Democracies didn’t generally fare so well in survivalist societies but then I remembered I was the one in the less than desirable position.

A woman’s voice shot out this time. I shouldn’t have been surprised at all by her question but I was. “Do you have someone named Tommy with you?”

From behind her I heard another woman’s voice say softly. “That was stupid Maggie, you should have asked them their names.”

I was reaching, but they had opened the door I might as well knock it off its hinges. “Do you have a Kit-Kat machine?” It would have been impossible to not hear their gasps of surprise. “I’ll take that as a yes?”

“How could you know? It was delivered the day the zombies came? It never even made it out into the lobby.” The same female voice asked disbelievingly.

“Maggie, why don’t you just invite them in?” Came the other feminine voice, it was worded as a sarcastic challenge and Maggie knew that, but she used the words for her own devices.

“Do you want to come in?” I guess her name is Maggie asked.

Before I could even answer I heard Tommy shout from across the way. “Can we get some Kit-Kat bars!?”

“Tommy? Right?” The voice that must be Maggie asked me.

“One and the same.” I answered. The potential for violence had passed like an ill wind but I still wasn’t taking any chances. “I’d like to grab my rifle and shoulder it.”

“Oh yeah sure, go ahead.” Came the male voice with not a hint of the earlier malice. We had, in seconds, gone from Showdown at the OK Corral to Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and again it was Tommy that saved the day. He was like a cat with the whole nine lives thing going on. No, that wasn’t quite right because cats don’t generally give their lives out for others. Whatever he was, he had at the very least saved my ass. I’d buy him that damned Kit-Kat machine.

The danger had passed, I can’t tell you how exactly I’d known but I did. I didn’t consider it gambling our lives on a hunch either. I waved Tracy and Brendon into the parking lot. They must have felt the same way I did because neither of them hesitated, as it was Tracy almost clipped Brendon’s front bumper in her haste to get in. Was Tommy broadcasting good cheer like a high wattage radio station? There was a good chance of it and if Tommy wasn’t concerned then none of us should be.

The little motel wasn’t much to look at. It was two stories tall and basically just a giant box. It was like any other motel you’ve seen 150,000 times before if you had ever traveled the highways of North America. That being said it was in better shape than 95% of those other motels. I’d even wager that during the summer months the pool wasn’t a shade of avocado green. As tired as I was, the Ritz Carlton would not have looked much better. The man lowered a ladder down to us that I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe because it was painted black but more likely because I had a green laser dot on my chest. Those tend to transfix your attention to the detriment of all other things.

Tommy had come up beside me, eyeing the ladder warily.

I absently fingered the gun on my shoulder. Unease trickled in from a small black hole in the base of my skull. “What’s the matter Tommy?” I asked as innocently sounding as possible.

Tommy turned to look at me, his face a mask of seriousness. “The Kit-Kats aren’t up there.”

The unease evaporated under the light of a thousand suns. I laughed until tears streamed from my eyes, and I’m sorry to say, as snot sluiced from my nose. Tommy handed me a wrapper from his phantom pop-tarts. I started laughing harder at the prospect of wiping my nose with a piece of papery tinfoil. Catching my breath was becoming agonizingly difficult, in a good way.

Nicole had got out of the car to see what was so funny. When she saw the state that I was in she felt the need to comment. “Ew gross Dad, I’ll get you a paper towel.”

I started laughing harder, I guess it was the pent up endorphins. Under my tutelage, my daughter suffered to a degree of germ-a-phobia. She doesn’t have the advanced degree like I do, but she is working on her undergrad status. I laughed at how she cringed at my condition. Hell if I wasn’t laughing so hard I would have been grossed out too. True to her word within thirty seconds or so she had brought me half a roll of paper towels. I was beginning to come down from my self-induced high. Shit I’m a cheap date. That almost got me going again but streamers of snot nearly a foot long kept it at bay. Tommy was watching me fascinated. He kept absently wiping his nose, maybe in the hopes that I would follow his lead.

“Ew Dad! Take these!” My daughter said, thrusting the paper towels into my hand.

“How’s about a kiss for your dear old dad?” I made like I would go after her and she fled like I was the world’s largest oozing sore. I was moments away from bursting. My sinuses ached from the fluid I had pumped through them. I couldn’t even begin to explain how happy I was when later Maggie would break out a First Aid kit that contained Benadryl.

I assured Tommy that we would get some Kit-Kats before the night was through, but right now we should meet our hosts. That seemed to mollify him somewhat and at least his bottom lip stopped quivering. Tommy made sure he was first up the ladder. I think he was so that he could get the greeting part out of the way and the eating part underway. Again Tommy’s action made me realize that this was a safe place but it still takes more than a minute or so to get the stain of a bullet beacon off of your mind.

While the event is taking place and adrenaline is surging through your veins, you have a difficult time assessing just how much danger you are in or how close you are to taking a dirt nap. It’s after the fact, when you’ve burned through your go-go juice and the imminent danger has passed. That is when the mind fuck really starts to set in. You’ve never heard of Amid Traumatic Stress Syndrome. There’s no time to become a basket case in battle. My friends that didn’t react back in Iraq, well, I buried them.

But now that this last crisis had passed, my knees were weak and my breath was ragged. I couldn’t get the images out of my head of my inconsolable wife and daughter as they looked down on my lifeless body. I knew the boys would soldier on. I had prepared them well. Even Tommy would be alright. He had an uncanny ability to see the world in a better light, rather than the black one that covered us now. Could rose-colored glasses change the landscape that much? No, for the umpteenth time I knew in my depths it was something much grander than I was prepared to accept or acknowledge with him. I knew Henry would feel the loss, say what you will but I know I’m more than just a food delivery system for him. If you never had the grand opportunity to befriend (not own) a bully than you have truly missed out on one of life’s pleasures. I have never encountered a breed of dog that possessed more of the grander human traits, love and affection, without the less savory ones, hostility and aggression. Yes Henry would feel the loss, of that I was sure. He would not have the capacity to understand where I had gone off to, hopefully he would think I went to live out the rest of my life on some huge hominid farm. Yes, these are all the thoughts that coursed through my head as I marshaled my reserves and ascended the ladder.

Tommy was already busy making new friends when I came over the railing. The man who had moments earlier been about to give me some internal air conditioning, grabbed a handful of my jacket and helped me over. Under normal circumstances I might have been so inclined as to shrug his arm off of me but since I was pulling energy from my stashed resources, I accepted his offer. Brendon, BT, Travis and Jen, hung back by the cars in a loose semi-circle, their placement making it very difficult to be taken out quickly in an ambush. Justin had never got out of the van and Tracy and Nicole both got into the driver’s seat of their respective machines. All in all it was a very tactical maneuver, we were becoming good at the game of staying alive. We had to. The stakes were too large.

I had no sooner finished appraising our situation when the motel man spoke to me.

“Sorry about that.” He said with a quick mirthless smile. “Can’t be too careful these days.”

I nodded like a bobble head doll. I wanted to break his jaw.

When he saw I wasn’t going to give him the standard ‘It’s ok. I understand that you had to point a gun at me and threaten to shred my innards into the contour of Chipotle pulled pork. I get it, it’s cool, let’s be best friends. Do you mind if I break your jaw?’

He continued. “Right. Well then my name is Denmark and the lady over there giving the big fella a hug is my wife Maggie.”

“Who’s the one that wanted you to shoot me?”

He leaned in conspiratorially “That’s Maggie’s sister, Greta. She’s a mean bitch, that one.”

“I gathered that.”

He laughed. I wanted to, I just wasn’t there yet.

Maggie disengaged from Tommy, her face beaming. Maggie asked Tommy one question before she came over to me. “Why the broccoli tree?”

“His mom says he should eat more greens.” I answered for him.

Maggie came over to me with her hand outstretched I took it only out of a courtesy I didn’t feel. “Welcome, welcome!” She said pumping my arm vigorously. Her sour faced sister looked over Maggie’s shoulder. Greta’s look still conveyed the feeling that Denmark should have taken the shot. One glance at Greta and I knew why she was such a ‘mean bitch.’ Maggie was slightly older than Greta, maybe late fifties to Greta’s mid-fifties. But that was it for similarities. At one time it was easy to see that Maggie, was quite the looker, even now she bore a stately beauty that belied her years. Greta must have pissed God off something fierce because she had been whacked with the ugly stick a few dozen times. Where Maggie was tall and slender, Greta was short and rotund. Maggie’s regal features were only more sharply pointed out by Greta’s globbish ones. It must have been absolute hell growing up in that shadow.

I pulled Denmark close after Maggie’s embracing welcome and Greta’s dismissive nod. “They’re sisters?”

Denmark nodded. “That goat’s been a thorn in my side since I married her sister. But to have the one I had to accept the other. It’s been a good deal but there have been times I’ve thought of trying to fix Greta up with one of my friends. But not a one of my friends has ever crossed me enough to warrant that punishment ‘Sides, I don’t think she’d ever leave her sister and then I’d be stuck with her, her pissed off new husband and a lost friend.”

“I see your point.” I liked Denmark. The previous incident, while not completely forgotten was beginning to be covered over with better thoughts. Thank the stars for all the weed I smoked as a kid. Having short-term memory loss could be a plus sometimes. “So what’s your status here?” I asked

Denmark hesitated, sure I had shook his hand and his wife was completely enamored with Tommy, but we were still strangers and as he gazed down at my traveling companions he knew we were a small army unto ourselves. A sheer moment of trepidation crossed his face as he realized he may have just opened up his last hold-out of safety to us.

I watched as his emotions ran the gambit from ‘Thank God I have some help’ to ‘Oh God what have I done.’ I could only take so much pleasure in the man’s discomfort. Some small piece of me did like the fact that now he was the one to squirm but I let the pettiness pass. “You’re fine Denmark. We’re somewhat good people just trying to make our way through.”

He released the building tension within himself with a heavy sigh. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to let my guard down.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “It’s just been me and the girls the last couple of weeks. We had a few guests at the time.” He looked at me with doleful eyes. “Well you know.” I nodded in ascension, I knew all too well. “Well they left to go back to wherever they had come from. I can’t imagine they got to where they were going though. It was a lot more chaotic back then. For the most part now, we only see the the..” He groped for the right word.

How can anybody be alive in the 21^st century and not know the name for the living dead. I was soon to learn that he was a fan of all novels, if they were of the western variety. Not many zombies traversing down the Rio Grande back in those days.

“Zombies.” I assisted him.

“Yeah right those things. We had a hell of a time those first few days. Didn’t sleep much, shot my way out of more jams than I care to remember.” He shuddered as he thought back. “Maggie and Greta never so much as fired a gun. ‘Sides I didn’t want her to be weighed down with those pictures in her head. Maggie that is, I thought Greta might be good at it, seeing as how mean she is. The only thing she was good at was pointing out what else needed to be shot, I suppose that had its own benefits.”

“And minuses.” I added.

“And minuses.” He said looking at me. “We tried to make a go of it from the lobby. Our place is downstairs and there’s a full kitchen with food and amenities. But they kept breaking through whatever defenses we put up.”

I sympathized, how many seemingly unbreechable defenses had they circumvented at Little Turtle. A pang of homesickness coursed through me like bad chili.

“After the fourth night of no sleep, we moved to the second floor. Seemed hardly worth it at the time, it just meant those things were going to be a little more tired before they ate us. Was Maggie had the idea to get rid of the steps. First we threw some dressers and beds, mattresses whatever it took to keep them from getting up here. Then I grabbed a toolbox that I have in the utility room up here and smashed through the concrete step. The hardest part was sawing through the metal support each step had. Figured two steps would be enough, I did four on each stairwell.”

“Great minds think alike.” I recounted to him my whole stair removal and carnival ride installation. He got a good laugh when I told him how pissed off my wife had been.

“We lived on crappy candy bars, mountain dew and old donuts for five days while those things hovered around looking for food. And then they just sort of up and left. I killed whatever stragglers came by, but the worst of it seemed over. I nearly broke my leg when I tried to jump over the missing steps. I went back to our apartment and grabbed boxes of food to bring back up and then I realized I’d never be able to jump that gap going up. Not nearly as spry as I used to be, I used to play football when I was in high school, outside tackle.”

He seemed to need to tell me all this I didn’t see any reason to stop him. Figuring I might be ensnared in his story for a bit, I took a moment as he sorted through his old memories to let everyone know below that it was a-ok up here and that they should park and bring ALL the ammo. If we were going to be in a firefight, I was going to make it as one sided as possible.

He continued as if I had never turned away. “But that was a long time ago and I would have played college ball ‘cept for a knee injury my senior year. Last damn game of the season and we was winning 42 to 14. I was laughing and joking and actually making eyes with this pretty little cheerleader.”

“Maggie?”

“How’d you know?”

“Just a guess, you two look like you’ve been together for a long while.”

“I’m really glad I didn’t shoot you.”

“You and me both Denmark.”

“So there I am making an ass out of myself and the play goes off and I’m not paying any attention. My own teammate blindsided me. Not his fault at all, I never moved. Saw nothing but red as I fell in pain. Maggie was the first one to me. Not sure if she felt guilty about the whole thing but if it got her to say ‘yes’ when I asked her to marry me than it all worked out for the best.” His look was still of that far away dreamy quality, in a much happier time and place. “Where was I?” He looked like a coma victim suddenly come back to awareness after a prolonged sleep.

“Mountain dew and a bunch of food.” I prodded.

“Oh that Mountain Dew, that’s the devil’s brew that is. Never so much as sniffed the stuff before they came. Now I’m addicted to it. Damn near cost me my life.”

I laughed to myself. He talked about good old mountain dew like it was crack and you would have to go down to the seedier parts of towns and find a dealer. Did they pour it into little baggies? Would you buy it by the ounce? I let me inner thread stop as Denmark continued with his story.

“So first when’d...”

‘When’d?’ Is that a word? I’d have to ask Tracy later.

“…I realized I couldn’t get back up the stairs I grabbed this here ladder.”

Which was vibrating slightly from Brendon’s third trip up with ammo. “You sure about all this ammo, Mike?” He asked pleadingly.

I nodded, not interrupting Denmark’s story. I heard Brendon mumbling something about how ‘just because I was his girlfriend’s dad (mumble) go fu…(grumble)…self.’ The rest was lost as he moved further away and Jen came up with some food. I smiled. Sometimes command had its perks.

Denmark continued his narrative. “And that’s how we’ve been getting stuff. That mountain dew though, I couldn’t get enough. Emptied the soda machine up here within a couple of days and then the one downstairs a few days after that.”

I thought that might be where his life had been endangered, I was wrong.

“I went for about 48 hours without the stuff, I was sucking down Pepsi’s in hopes that they would ease the craving. It didn’t work, I thought Sprite might do the trick, didn’t even come close. Maggie thought I had lost my mind when I told her I had to go down to the Piggly Wiggly to get me some more. She told me I was going to do no such thing. Greta just gave me a list of things she wanted. Maggie got so upset I figured she was finally going to give her sister the old heave ho for that. Well you can see that didn’t happen.”

I lamented with him at the appropriate time.

“So’s I grabbed Ole Bessie here.” He said holding up his rifle.

It looked nothing like its namesake. It was a tricked out AK-47 with a sighting laser (obviously) and a 150 round ammunition drum attached. I had no idea where he would have come across such a monstrously wonderful weapon but I was going to ask.

“And I climbed down the ladder, the missus told me that if I didn’t come home safe and sound to not bother coming home at all. She was so upset I don’t think she knew that she made absolutely no sense. I figured if I got in enough trouble that I couldn’t get home, then I was pretty much dead.”

I nodded with him in agreement.

“So then she tells me that if I’m going anyway I might as well get…well you get the point, ended up she had a list too. Felt like a damn fool heading to the Piggly Wiggly with a rifle strapped to my back. Drove my old pickup truck.”

Which was actually a 2009 GMC Jimmy, the thing was pristine, I looked longingly at it and then back at the Terrible Teal Machine a few times during our stay there.

“Got to the mart and it was quiet, quiet like the world was holding its breath, wondering what was going to happen next. There was nothing on those two shopping lists I felt was worth my life, damn near turned around the second my boot crunched down on the pavement. I was gonna go back and tell Maggie, my knee was acting up and I couldn’t walk right, much less run iffen I had too. Maggie and Greta would have known I had chickened out, but Greta would have told me so to my face, that dour faced….., is she around? No? Bitch. I had one foot on the ground and one still in the truck. That damn Dew made me do it. I had to have it. Seemed about the only thing in this world ‘sides my Maggie worth living for.”

I loved beer, and I couldn’t even begin to explain how I longed to chug that nectar of the gods but would I risk my life for it? And then I really, I mean really pondered the question. Fuck, I think I would. Stupid, sure but there’s more than one person, starting with my wife, that’ll tell you I’m not a rocket scientist.

“I used my tire iron to pry the doors open, no ‘lectricity and all.” He looked at me as he said this to see if I was judging him for his lapse in moral character.

It took me a second to understand what he was asking me. My understanding? My forgiveness? “We are all doing what we need to do Denmark.” Why he cared about my thoughts on the matter, I didn’t know. I didn’t then and I don’t now, have the power of absolution.

“Smell. The smell was what hit me first. I don’t like to think of it much. I can still recall it. When I was 15 had a Coon dog, that got sprayed by a skunk, that was Chanel No. 5 in comparison.”

Oh I knew that smell all too well, the zombies, not the Chanel No. 5. An SOS pad on a stick, shoved up my nose, and thoroughly whisked around would not eradicate the perpetual olfactory odor that had been burned in that unfortunate sense.

“Michael, I pretended it was the meat gone bad. I guess it kind of was.” He laughed. “Just wrong kind.” His smile disappeared as rapidly as it had come on. “The regular lights were out. There were still a couple of red auxiliary lights hanging on to some small trickle of power. It did little to make the store seem more shoppable. If some little five year old had come from behind a register and said ‘boogey-d-boo’ I would have pissed myself.”

I laughed. Denmark didn’t share in my view. I get that a lot. Either my base of reference is highly skewed or everyone else’s is. I figured it was everyone else, why shine that light on myself.

“I propped the door open to get some light and some breathable air in. It helped some, but only if I stayed within 15 feet of the door. Figured my odds of everything on my lists being that close was slim to none.” He laughed. I didn’t. We’d synch up sooner or later.

“Good story Mike?” Brendon said peevishly as he made his 4^th? No maybe 7^th trip up the ladder.

I wanted to respond and tell him ‘Yeah not bad.’ But I needed to remember that in the post-apocalyptical world virtually everyone was armed.

Denmark wiped his face with rough hands, long exposed to the ardor of hard work and cold weather. If he had cried, I pretended not to notice. “And then they started to come Mike, those…those things. They were my friends and my neighbors, I blew the head off my kids Sunday School teacher. Perts, the postman nearly got me, I’d never seen him move so fast when he was delivering the mail.”

I so wanted to laugh now, again, not appropriate.

“I put twenty rounds in him ‘fore I had the good sense the lord gave me to let go of the trigger.”

I harkened back to my magazine emptying encounter with the double-fat twins. I think that was like twenty years ago.

“And still they came Mike, had to have been a couple dozen iffen there was one. My ammo drum came up empty just as I killed the last one. If there had been just one more, I probably would have just stood there while it did his thing. I think I was in shock.”

“That’s understandable Denmark. Not many a man has had to go through what you’ve gone through.” I almost thought of adding ‘at least that’s how it used to be, anybody alive now has had to’.

“I didn’t even go back to the truck and get the extra ammo. I grabbed a cart and a sanitary wipe.”

A man after my own heart.

“And shopped, I walked around the bodies like it was the most natural thing in the world. I did grab three of everything just because I never wanted to have to go back to that store again.” He wiped his face again, attempting to remove the invisible stain that the encounter had placed on him.

I assured him, that was the way of the world now. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect but he had done nothing shameful or worthy of his guilt. He appreciated the words but I don’t know how effective they were.

CHAPTER 18

Within the hour we were all sitting in unit 203. Denmark had salvaged an old potbelly stove that kept the room a balmy two degrees below the temperature on the surface of the sun. Occasionally I had to go outside to keep my lungs from cooking because of the super-heated air. If it bothered Denmark, Maggie or Greta, in the least, they didn’t let anyone know. The mood was convivial, even Greta smiled a few times which I think really caught Denmark by surprise. I was fairly convinced he didn’t think she had the muscle memory to do such an action.

Everyone had let their guard down somewhat. Maggie couldn’t stop fussing over the boys. She said they reminded her of her own boys. They had not heard from Larry or Jim since the start of it all. For moments she would get lost in her thoughts and grief and then come back around full circle beginning with wiping Tommy’s Kit-Kat swathed face. Travis squirmed from her ministrations. Torn between acting like the man he was rapidly and forcibly becoming and the boy who still looked to adults for all the answers and protection. Justin feigned sleep to be left alone. In my twisted brain I feared that it was the contact with goodness that so repelled him from her.

Denmark was a great storyteller and had the entire room enthralled in some story involving a canoe, a tree that ate people and a cat that saved the world. Between the length of the day, the heat from the stove and a now sated belly I found myself dozing off. I was startled awake to some raucous laughter, something about the cat falling out of the canoe and into the water. I stumbled out of the room. I had the uncomfortable feeling that my liver was beginning to cook from the inside out. This must be what that poodle felt like when its master tried to dry him off in the microwave. I opened the door and the bracing cold in my face as well as the fire behind the sensation was invigorating.

“What’d you grow up in a barn.” Came Denmark’s voice.

I had heard the rebuke from my mother enough to know he wanted me to either go in or out and shut the door in either case. My intention was to continue on out and pull in some cold fresh air into my lungs in hopes to store it against the stove's blistering heat.

“Michael?” Denmark asked when I didn’t move.

Tracy turned to look due to Denmark’s tone. I was a man frozen but not by cold. “Talbot?” No response.

I turned. “Boys.” And that was all it took, Brendon and Travis grabbed their gear and followed me out onto the balcony. It was the smell. I couldn’t see a damn thing below me. It was a new moon and even if that wasn’t the case the thick cloud cover still would have blanketed any potential light. Between the smell and the shuffling, we once again found ourselves in the midst of the enemy. It didn’t quite smell or feel like the mother lode but we wouldn’t be able to tell until the morning.

“Sweet Jesus.” Denmark said as he came to the railing.

“Den, don’t you use that kind of language.” Maggie shot from behind him.

“Haven’t seen a one of them in nearly a week I figured it was over.” Denmark remarked.

I felt terrible. I knew without a shadow of a doubt we were the reason they were here. I don’t know how I knew it but I did. BT was busy moving some of the ammo cans into place. Jen was loading and then checking her loaded weapon over and over again like a looped tape.

Tommy stood next to me. I was going to have to ask him how he kept doing that. “He’s coming Mr. T.” He might as well have sliced through the thin skin up my spine. Cutting through the small layer of connective tissues and nerves and then pulled the bloody pieces apart to drop ice into the wound. I managed to not convulse at his words but not by much. Tommy hugged me tight although I didn’t relish the attention. The last time Tommy hugged something this fiercely was when Bear had sacrificed himself for us. The ice on my spine turned to salt, my throat constricted. “I’m sorry Mr. T.” Tommy wailed.

I wanted to assure him everything was going to be alright, but all that kept going through my head was, ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.’ You get the point. I was collecting my thoughts, when Jen asked me where she should set up.

“Uh.” My mind was addled. “Uh maybe take Tommy back into the room and get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day and nothing’s going to happen tonight.” ‘Unless I die’ I wanted to add.

“Tommy’s still in the room.” Jen answered.

“Wha..” I turned to look. Tommy was still seated in the far corner of the room. Maggie was busy wiping chocolate off his face.

He peered up and over her shoulder when he felt I was looking at him, his expression told me the encounter had been real. ‘Oh fuck.’

I told myself over and over again that long night, that I was still alive. But who was kidding who. I was a dead man walking. Had Tommy cursed me with a self-fulfilling prophecy? Would I now seek out death? Or had he blessed me with the opportunity to tell the ones I loved how I felt? Now remember I am a former Marine raised by a former Marine, marching into death was my business. Telling people I loved how I felt about them scared the shit out of me.

“Jen you’ve been doing a great job. That gun is loaded.” I told her. Damn it, ok I’ll get better with the next one.

I could feel her confusion at my words as she answered me. “Thanks, I think?”

“Hey BT how you doing man?”

“What do you want Talbot? Can’t you see I’m busy?” BT was busy stacking ammo cans of varying calibers all around the top balcony of the motel. The Battle of Motel 6 might not become nearly as famous as the Alamo, but I would bet we would fire as many shots.

“I just wanted to tell you BT, thank you for saving my life back there in Bennett.”

Without looking back at me as he placed another 50 pound can down. “Didn’t so much do it for you as I did it for myself.” Now he stopped to look at me to find out my reaction. “I told you before Talbot, you have this uncanny knack for getting out of jams and I want to be there when you do.”

“Thanks I think?” I answered him. “All the same I wanted to make sure you knew I appreciated what you had done.”

“You’re welcome.” He said as he lugged a few more ammo cans away.

I was walking around like a wraith, the hustle and bustle of the living barely disturbing me. “Brendon you got a sec?”

“Mike I got all the ammo, besides I wouldn’t go down there now for a .50 cal machine gun.”

“No, no take a break for a sec and walk with me.” We walked to the far end of the building, the air seemed marginally cleaner here. “Listen, if something were to happen to me, you need to remember who your first allegiance is to.”

“Is this about Bennett, Mike? I got the message loud and clear.”

“Yes and no Brendon. There is no one that is going to protect our backs but ourselves. Our first duty is to our family, I just need to know that you’re willing to make that step no matter how much it pains you. That you will forego all others for the penultimate safety of Nicole and the rest of the family.”

“Mike you’re talking crazy. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure Nicole is safe, and the rest of the family.”

“That’s all I needed to know. No matter what happens tomorrow I just wanted to tell you that’s it has been an honor fighting next to you. I knew men with twice the training that only fought half as well as you.” I couldn’t be sure but I just about felt his chest swelling with pride.

I was half way back down the walkway when he said his ‘Thank You’ followed by ‘That was weird.’

I went back into Denmark’s room. The only occupants were Justin and Henry. Justin was parked a mere foot and a half away from the stove. If I hadn’t known better, I thought he might be trying to burn something out of himself. Shit maybe he was. I could see him shivering as I approached.

“He’s close, dad.”

“Who’s close son?” I asked him

Justin looked up with me, his tortured eyes said it all. “Eliza said she has a surprise for you. She says that you left somebody behind at Little Turtle that’s she has found to be very, very useful.”

My throat closed, not because of the forewarning omen, but because of the grip this evil, oily presence had on my son. I kept flashing back to him as a wide-eyed kid who loved to fish. He had even gone so far as to fill our bathtub up once and put all our expensive fish in it. Fury had pumped through my veins when I came across the small splashes of water that led to the bathroom. The accumulation of those fish had cost me over a thousand dollars. The door nearly came off its hinges when I barged through. Justin smiled up at me his two front teeth missing, ‘Catch and release Dad. Catch and release.’ Like a super soaker to a match, the anger melted into laughter. I lost a few fish to the stress of the endeavor but that seemed like a small price to pay for the parental wisdom I gained. We went camping the next weekend next to a stream. Didn’t catch anything, best time ever.

“How you doing son?” I asked. We both knew what I meant, wasn’t really a secret between us.

“Slippin’ Dad. When I think about it, I can hold it off, but when I’m tired or sleeping or even in a bad mood she starts to needle in my head.”

“You need to fight it with everything that you are, Justin. I wish I knew what you were fighting. It’s a lot easier to take out an enemy that you can see. Justin I need to know if you’re a danger to them.”

“Dad, we both know the answer to that. Sometimes I think it would be so much better if you just left me on the side of the road. But I’m so scared. She said she would exact her revenge personally if I left you.”

“Can Tommy help?”

He shook his head in the negative. “Tommy figured out some way to get around her influence but he holds no sway over me. Every time I get within ten feet of him it’s like someone is rabbit punching me in the kidneys. I think he feels the same way. I’ve seen him try and hide his grimaces.”

I had no answer. Cialis couldn’t cure this impotence. I couldn’t track down a doctor in the world that would know what to do. Shaman maybe? I’m sure I could find a tribe of Black Feet around here somewhere.

“Dad I’ll do what’s right if it comes to that.”

I couldn’t catch my breath. I wouldn’t even acknowledge what he had implied. I told him I loved him as I stumbled out of the room. I nearly did a header over the railing before Tracy grabbed my arm. She had been watching my encounter with Justin. I knew that she had been keeping a close eye on us since my accusation.

“You alright Talbot? You look like shit.”

“Goes hand in hand with how I feel.”

“What did you and Justin talk about?” She asked innocently enough.

I looked at her with as little facial expression as I could pull off. My muscles rippled underneath trying in vain to display the stark terror that bristled through them.

“I was ah…asking him if he would be able to shoot tomorrow.”

“It’s a good thing you can’t play poker Talbot, you’d be living in a refrigerator box.”

“Nothing wrong with that, it’s easy to heat them.” My piss poor attempt at humor didn’t bring me far from the edge of my despair.

When Tracy felt I was no longer in danger of toppling over the railing she headed into the room to see if I had upset Justin. Didn’t that beat all. Travis was next on my list, only because he was closest. “Hey Trav.” I started off innocently enough.

His eyes glistened in what murky light was available to us. Most would have thought it tears of fear. It wasn’t. I’d seen it before in Iraq it was bloodlust. We had hours to go before we started the dance of death and Travis was burning through adrenaline like a funny car through ethanol. “What’s up dad?” He asked, his stare never coming off the unseen enemy below us.

“You know I love you right?”

He nearly tore his gaze away to see what my major malfunction was but even my seeming traverse into feminity couldn’t pull him away from the projected task at hand. “Dad.” He fairly squirmed as he said it. It was good to see that under that steely-eyed mask was the kid who I had been tossing the football around with recently.

“I just want you to know son, no matter what happens, it’s…look at me.” He turned. “It’s important to remember it’s not about the killing.” By the stare in his eyes I could tell that he was not grasping the meaning of my words. “Trav it’s not about the killing, it’s about the living. We kill so that we may live.”

“Dad that’s what I’m doing.” He said in that perfect teenage tone, that implies he is master of all he surveys. “That’s what we’re all doing.”

“It’s a fine line we walk son. I take absolutely no joy in these kills.” He gaze dipped. “As soon as we take enjoyment in the killing of others no matter what the state of them we have already lost.”

“Lost what, dad?”

“Our humanity. We fight and we kill to protect ourselves and those we love because there is no stronger bond than family. When all else goes to shit, we are all that we have to rely on.”

“Like it has?”

“Like it has.” I agreed. “We’re it. We are our last line of defense. I would die a thousand deaths before I so much as thought one of you might get hurt. That is a heavy burden to carry. Someday when you have a family of your own it will be your burden to carry. We kill these monsters because we have too, not because we want to. It’s a fine distinction Travis and I just don’t want you to get lost along the way.” I tousled his hair (which pissed him off) told him I loved him and walked away before he saw the glistening in my eyes that had more to do with my inner feelings. Like any teenager, I figure he grasped about 10% of what I was shooting for. It would be many long years (which I earnestly hoped he had) of deep reflection of this day. He would come to his own conclusion. I either made my point or I did not. With my death it would be something he would dwell on constantly. If my death kept him from losing himself in the battle then it would be worth it.

I had just finished masking the majority of my leaky duct works when I came across Nicole, she was hovering close to Brendon without making it look too obvious that was what she was doing. “Hey sweetie. How’s my favorite daughter?” It was an old joke between us.

“Hey dad.” Her smile put a glimmer of light in my blackened heart. Nicole was as intuitive as they come and saw no real reason to mince words. “Dad, I’ve seen you making your rounds, what gives?”

“Just giving the pre-battle pep talk.” I lied badly. She didn’t buy it.

“Dad?!” She fairly demanded. I thought she might even stomp her foot like she would when she was five and didn’t get her way.

A parent’s first instinct is to protect their children and that was my first inclination. I was going to blow off Nicole’s concerns and gloss it over with frivolities. She would have seen through it for sure but it would have got me out from under her questioning stare. I decided to temper the truth. This time she let me get away with it. “I just don’t have a good feeling about tomorrow, Coley.” I hugged her fiercely.

“It’ll be alright dad.” She said halfway between a statement and a question. I am supposed to be the rock with which my kids can crash their concerns against. But this rock was feeling a little spongy at the moment.

Brendon saved the day. “Hey Mike, we’re all set, I’m gonna turn in before the fireworks begin. You coming Coley?” He asked.

“Thanks Brendon.” My dual recognition of his work and pulling Nicole away, was not lost on him.

Nicole looked long and hard at me. Trying her best to ascertain the underlying truth beneath my veiled words before she turned and followed her betrothed. “Good night dad.” She called back. “I love you.”

I croaked out an ‘I love you too.’ Thankful for the darkness in the night that hid the waterworks. I had thought I had completely escaped with my manhood unscathed, I was wrong.

“Alright Talbot, out with it.” Tracy had come up behind me and had startled the hell out of me.

Nothing but the truth was going to appease her and my mind was entirely too befuddled to come up with anything even fairly convincing. “Tommy hugged me.” I told her, sounded kind of pathetic when I put it that way.

“And?”

“And what?”

“What’s the rest of it? Tommy gave you a hug, he does that all the time.”

“He…he told me he was sorry.”

“Sorry for what? Talbot what aren’t you telling me? One of the most lovable kids in the world gives you a hug and then apologizes. I don’t see why that is making you walk around all long faced and telling everyone what a great job they’re doing and that you love them.” I watched as the light of recognition came on in Tracy’s awareness and then she did something I never figured, she laughed. “Oh that’s it! You think you’re going to die tomorrow! That’s hilarious!”

“But…but Tommy hugged me.”

Her laugh stopped mid-stream. Her index finger of doom, lashed out. “Listen Talbot!” I was. “You are not dying tomorrow or the next day for that matter or any time soon, I won’t allow it! You cannot leave me alone in this nightmare!” Her index finger turned into a loose fist as she hollowly punched me in the chest, her forgotten laugh approaching a sob. “I won’t allow it!” She screamed. I was too stunned to even reply. Work that was nearly completed started again as people scrambled to look busy before Tracy could turn her angst on them. She turned and headed back to the room. The zombies waited patiently below.

CHAPTER 19

The morning brought sunlight, and that was the end of the good news. Two hundred maybe two hundred and fifty zombies stirred below and more were coming. We could see them approaching across frozen fields, from the highway and from God (if he cared) knows where. Let’s see I could use, like a moth to a flame, or maybe a lawyer to a car accident or maybe just the truth, like a zombie to a brain buffet. We could hear some of the zombies that had broken through into the rooms below and the lobby.

A large sheet of glass shattered as Tommy came up to the railing. “That’s the Kit-Kat machine, Mr. T. Whew pretty glad I got them all out last night.” He was grinning as he hefted up a pillowcase stuffed to the brim with the bars.

Our encounter last night didn’t seem to be on his radar at all. Was he purposefully suppressing it or had I made too much out of it? Questions, questions and no fucking answers, isn’t that the way of the world?

BT opened fire. The bloodbath had begun. Travis had waited as long as he could. The Mossberg thundered through the air followed shortly thereafter by the high concussion rounds of Denmark’s AK-47. The smell of iron rich blood as it poured down storm drains nearly masked the stench of the dead. Body parts littered the ground, blown clean off under the strain of trying to capture a high-speed lead projectile. Rotten half-digested stomach contents spilled out of lacerated intestines. Zombies were becoming mired in the detritus of body parts. More than one zombie fell over entangled in it’s own bowels. The smell of shit, believe it or not, was entirely more welcome than the gangrenous odor of the dead. Denmark’s rapid rate of fire and seemingly endless supply of ammunition had nearly halved the opposing force. Jen and Brendon had by now joined in to the chorus of destruction. Heads blew out their contents. Bone and brain pattered down like the world’s most macabre hailstorm. The parking lot became bathed in hues of reds and browns. The light snow that fell did little to hide the destruction. It more than anything else, highlighted the contrast between its purity and the stained contents of the zombies.

My grief was heavy as I shouldered my weapon and did my part to eradicate the world of what evolution had now deemed the dominant species. Three magazines later of carefully aimed shots I called for a ceasefire. Three shouts later my command was heeded. Not much stood save a smallish, maybe ten year old boy. I turned my head away just as I saw a green laser dot clearly outlined on the boy’s throat. I didn’t know which hit the ground first, the boy’s body or his decapitated head. Both rang hollowly in my ears.

“We showed them!” Denmark barked. His jubilation joined by the others.

“Showed them what!’ I bellowed. “Do you think they give a shit? Do you think some other zombies are going to stumble across this and think ‘Hum, maybe we shouldn’t fuck with those humans, they’re bad ass. They don’t care. They’ll just keep coming, our former friends, our relatives, our post men.” I looked directly at Denmark, his gaze dropped. “They’re not going to build a memorial for their fallen comrades. They’re just going to keep coming until there’s nothing left.” Well I guess I had finished what I had started. I had completely wiped out any satisfaction we may have gained in our ‘victory’. What a fucken killjoy I turned out to be.

“How to mellow a high Talbot.” BT threw out there.

Not a sound was made, not even a stirring zombie. Nobody was sure in which direction I was going to go in from BT’s barb. “Oh you fuck.” And then I started laughing. Joined in by the rest. It seemed impossible that we would laugh amidst all the destruction below us but stress finds its own necessary release.

Straggler’s, to prove my earlier point, kept coming in only to be met with unmitigated leaden justice. A more pressing concern lodged into my head as I watched the newest interloper go down in a cacophony of bullets, actually a couple of concerns. Our mini-vans were completely encased in the shards of zombie remains. This wasn’t Alex’s truck, we would never be able to just drive over them or push them out of the way. The Terrible Teal machine would spin in place like a washing machine. Clearing out an exit for the cars wouldn’t take an abnormally long amount of time. Touching and dragging the bodies out of the way was not a palatable mission. Anything less than a Level 5 biohazard suit seemed to me to make the whole endeavor a nearly impossible assignment.

Secondly, and just as important, while we could clear a path and be on the road in the next half hour once our ammo and food were back in the cars, what kind of ungrateful bastard guests would we be if we had just made the world’s worst mess and then abruptly left. The zombies had come for the Talbot party, table of eight. To leave this horrendous display of death for Denmark was incomprehensible to me. Moving this many pieces of bodies to a safe enough distance whilst also keeping a vigilant eye out for others of their kind was going to take hours.

I vomited four times that morning. The first was as my first misplaced step off the ladder landed squarely on an eyeball. The resounding pop and ooze of viscous liquid from beneath my boot propelled anything worth digesting out of my mouth and onto the rungs of the ladder.

“Oh fucking Talbot!” BT lamented, as he was higher up the ladder and following me down.

“Sorry about that.” I wiped my mouth, my agitated stomach letting me know just how much it was displeased with this course of events.

In such a confined area with that many bodies it was absolutely impossible to not keep stepping on THINGS. Yeah, hold onto that thought. They are NOT fingers and forearms and skull plates. They are THINGS. Oh, who am I kidding! This looked like the world’s largest blender had been filled with humans and someone had held down the blend button for about a half second. So not nearly enough time to puree the contents but merely chop down the bigger pieces. You thought liver smelled bad when your mom cooked it? Try stepping on one fresh out of a corpse. Vomit number two did nothing to mask the putrification around me. BT wasn’t fairing much better than I was. If not for Jen’s lead and our need to competitively ‘keep up’ with her, it might have been a job that didn’t get done. No matter the guilt I felt for leaving Denmark in such a lurch. She set about the burden with a grim willpower.

Denmark and Travis stood watch over us as we dragged the human odds and ends out of the parking lot. If this were a real job that demanded compensation, I don’t think there would be a sum worthy. But survival has its own price, one that we couldn’t pay enough to satisfy. Occasionally a shot would ring out, hampering any more visitors from coming in for an afternoon meal. As we stacked the bodies behind the Dairy Queen like cordwood, we took the time to watch each other’s backs. We were not under the watchful eye of our lookouts from that vantage point. The distance, I hoped, would keep the majority of stench from wafting into the motel but more importantly was the old adage of out of sight out of mind. Although anything less than Noah’s Ark type floodwaters was not going to wash away gallons upon gallons of blood that had overrun everything.

My third mouth breaching came as I grabbed onto some kid’s jacket. He was wedged under the body of a female that suspiciously bore a family resemblance. The family that eats together, stays together you know. Whether in life, in walking death or in absolute death, there was something about killing a family that tore something free from within me. I wanted to be out of this split femur soup. I reached under and grabbed the thing from underneath the armpits. I pulled with more exertion than the task demanded. I was rewarded with a wet tearing sound as the boy’s top half came loose from the disengorged innards that spilled like night crawlers from a broken bait box. I fell over still holding tight to the top half of the boys remains. Luckily, my fall was broken by the ample carcass of Frita, the Ihop waitress. Her nameplate quickly lost under my voluminous cascade of bile. I stood up quickly, a dizzying spell nearly bringing me to my knees again. Flesh, saturated with bodily fluids, slapped against my blood soaked jeans. I dropped the boy to the ground. When I felt the worst of the attack had passed I reached down and grabbed the boy’s hand, not in a gesture of good will, it was what allowed me the greatest grip. I did not turn around as I dragged the boy to his final resting spot.

Jen had somewhere acquired a snow shovel and had cleaned up what had spilled out of the boy, my burden had been getting lighter as I walked but I would not turn to detect the reason why. One more violent stomach outburst like the previous one and I would have left my spleen on that parking lot pavement. For the next hour I went through my duties like an automaton, bend, lift, drag, bend, lift, drag. I had become more like our enemy than I would have ever thought possible. BT for all his bravado was two pukes ahead of me, fine by me he was welcome to that trophy. And winner of the 2010 Lord Upchucks Cup goes to Big Tiny! Huge applause! I grinned. Nuggets of some distant forgotten meal bracketed my goatee. Pain wrenched my gut. My knee was on the verge of collapse and my smile resembled something closer to a scowl. But still I soldiered on. Tracy, Nicole and Brendon had spent the better part of the morning getting our belongings back into the minivans. They had just about finished, when me, and the death detail were down to single figure leftovers to remove, when Denmark’s warning came.

“Michael you best come up here and take a look.”

I hobbled over to the ladder, the blood of a hundred bodies was solidifying on every article of clothing I was wearing. Between my knee and the inflexibility of the frozen blood my navigation of the ladder was haphazard at best. ‘If this is the way I die I am going to be seriously pissed off.’

"You say something?” Denmark asked as he reached out to help me up and over and then abruptly thought better of his gesture. He warred within himself, the disgust of possibly touching anything that was attached to me or the common courtesy of helping me up the ladder. Courtesy won out as he reached his hand out again.

“I’ve got it, don’t worry Denmark.” I wanted to laugh as I watched the relief on his countenance.

“Dad, hurry!” Travis yelled.

Denmark went to clap me on the shoulder in an act of shared camaraderie and then pulled back as not even that innocuous part of me was free from debris. Within a few moments of caked blood cracking movement I was standing next to my son. I saw…nothing. Nicole and Tracy had packed the rest of the food into the back of the minivan. Brendon was finishing strapping something to the top of his minivan. BT and Jen were sharing a smoke that looked so good, the savory tobacco smoke wisping up into the cold winter air. Even from this distance I could tell BT’s hands were shaking. Jen had to try and time her placement as she went to hand him the cigarette.

“What?” I asked perplexed.

Travis’ pointing finger led my vision higher up the horizon. I saw a black smudge, a stain upon the skyline. I saw a plague upon my family. Hundreds, no thousands, tens of thousands of zombies blotted out the distant boundaries of my vision as they marched forward toward us.

“My God.” Denmark noted.

“Time to go Mr. T.” Tommy said as he reached to grab my hand.

I pulled away before he could make contact. “Oh Tommy I don’t think I could stand it if I passed on what I’ve been touching.” He understood, even if he wasn’t a tenth as concerned about it as I was.

“We leaving now?” He begged.

The scene, while not nearly as heroic and without the accompanying foreboding music, reminded me of the Lord of the Rings when the orcs and cave trolls descended on Helm’s Deep. I was transfixed. Stay and fight or just run. I looked to Denmark’s fear lined face and the consternation of his wife Maggie as she looked on and even to a lesser extent the misery that was etched on Greta’s face. My mind was made up. These people had opened their home and their hearts to us. What right did I have to bring this grisly end upon them.

“We’re leaving Tommy.” I said. Tommy was relieved.

“Michael.” Denmark peeled his eyes away from the abysmal vista. “I thought you were more of an admiral man than that.”

“What? Did you mean admirable?” I asked. I didn’t have the foggiest clue about what he was talking about.

“You are just going to leave me and Maggie and Greta like this?” He asked

“Oh.” I started. “Denmark it’s not like that at all.” His arched eyebrow let me know exactly what he thought of that response. “First off you’re welcome to join us, although I don’t see the benefits for you to that decision. Secondly we’re not leaving because we’re afraid of a fight. We’re leaving so that there won’t be one.”

“Huh?” Now it was his turn to question my words.

“Denmark do you really think it was a coincidence that we had that assembly of zombies here this morning?” He was not following the general drift of the conversation. I was going to have to forcibly show him the way. “Denmark we’ve been singled out. We’re being hunted. Some lower power has decided that our time on this glorious planet must soon be concluded.”

“Michael I know this event has caused a lot of strain on folks, better than you have wilted, but what makes you so special? Why would the zombies ‘hunt’ you?” Denmark begged.

I wanted to tell him that I was merely a by-product of the hunt, maybe a 6-point stag. The prize 12-point trophy was Tommy. Eliza wanted Tommy. I didn’t know if the kid knew it for sure or not but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. Denmark was about to pepper me with more accusations when Maggie interceded.

“It’s true Denny.” She said placing her hand on his taut shoulder.

“What are you talking about Maggie? All I see here is a coward, a man that runs from his responsibilities. Oh, he’s all bluster when he’s sitting by a stove eating a home cooked meal. Put the iron in the fire though and you can test the true strength of the metal.”

I knew his words were borne from fear and desperation. They didn’t even contain an iota of truth but still they cut to the bone, if only because he believed what he said.

“Look at him Maggie! He can’t even defend himself now! How much do my words hurt Michael? Will you be able to sleep tonight while my wife and I fight for our lives? Probably won’t be a problem for the likes of you!”

“Dammit Denny! Stop it!” Maggie grabbed him by the waist and turned him so that he could see the rage coursing through her body. “Justin! Justin told me everything!” She screamed.

“What are you talking about!?” The anger that mired his capacity to reason was blinding him.

“Since they have left their home in Colorado they have been followed. The one who calls herself Eliza has some sort of hold on the zombies.” Denmark was looking as his wife as if trying to figure out how hard it would be to get a hold of some anti-schizophrenic pills. Iffen there was such a thing. “Justin knew they were coming, he just didn’t know that they were this close.”

Justin silently cried behind her. “I’m so sorry Dad.”

“This isn’t your fault Justin, you’re caught up in it just like the rest of us.” I told him. It was of small solace to him but he accepted it like a stranded wanderer in the desert accepts water, greedily.

“What is going on?” Denmark cried, the whites of his eyes threatening to become the dominant force on his strained features.

“I’m trying to tell you Denmark. That if we leave, odds are that horde out there won’t even stop here.” I told him. He understood the words. He was just having a difficult time reconciling the validity of them. “Denmark, I swear to you, as much as you can trust a man in these dark days, trust me now. You are welcome to come with us. Hell with the firepower you carry I’d be thrilled if you came with us. But that would be the worst decision of your life. I’m not going to guarantee to you that zombies aren’t going to come your way eventually but that legion out there.” We all turned to look. “That’s especially for us.”

Denmark looked to the gathering, then back to my face and back to the mob. He licked his lips and then the next words out of his mouth nearly crippled me.

“Any chance you could take Greta?”

Maggie slapped the shit out of his head.

“BT, Jen come on!” I yelled down to them. “We’ve got to get going soon.”

“Come on Mike.” Jen pleaded. “I’m covered in gore. I was hoping to boil some water and wash up, thoroughly.”

“Sure you can, but come up the ladder a few rungs and then turn around.” Even from this distance, I could see the confusion on her face. She did as I asked though.

“Right, I’ll go grab my things.” She said. I’ll give her this, her face paled some, but she didn’t go into panic mode.

Rabid pack of cannibalistic, disease infested man-eaters or not. There was no way I was leaving without scraping the heavy layers of dirt, sweat, blood, excrement and the multitude of body bits off of me. I grabbed my k-bar knife and cut my clothes off of my body, the blood had congealed into body armor. I stood naked in that dark motel room, looking in the full-length mirror. A month and a half of zombies had done for me what no intense workout regiment could. Damn it, I looked good, I had the beginning signs of a six-pack on my stomach. My love handles were a thing of the past. My body looked lean and strong. Even with chunks of matter I could not identify stuck at odd angles and in strange places could not outdo how much my body had changed. I was close to the condition I had been over twenty years previously. Killing apparently had its perks. My black eyes betrayed no mirth in that thought.

I turned the shower on, waiting a few seconds before sticking my hand under the sand-blast force liquid. Waiting a few seconds for the water to heat up was a conditioned response but one in which I was not going to receive a favorable reply. I braced for the icy needles of pain that were about to lance my body. There isn’t a one of you out there that doesn’t know what I’m talking about. You can psyche yourself up all you want. Maybe even slap yourself a few times in the face to try and forget the infliction you are about to impart on yourself. Doesn’t matter, the moment that water hits anything above your knees the shock starts to set in. Catching a breath, all of a sudden becomes the most difficult thing in the world. You breath in these little ragged strips of air through clenched teeth. You cross your arms over your chest as if that is going to alleviate the immense discomfort bordering on psychotic pain that you are feeling. At this point you can’t even begin to understand why you are subjugating yourself to this. A failed water heater should be the most perfect reason in the world to not go into work.

This time though, was not normal. I was already numb. Numb to pain and numb to the world. I placed my hands on the shower stall wall and bathed in the bitter water as it flayed my soul into the drain. Soap was an afterthought. I watched as the man that was/is Michael Talbot spread the tiny bar across his semi-exposed rib cage. Shampoo intermingled with viscera. The humanity stew clogged the drain. The Michael man did not notice as he stepped out of the ice sharded water. The part of me that was mostly me, but not all of me, took this opportune time to reunite with the more primitive side. I gently reminded that side that he should dry his freezing ass off before he caught pneumonia.

Tracy had come in with new clothes while I had been wringing out my soul. I stood once again in front of the mirror shivering, partly from the cold, partly from the pain and mostly from the sense of loss. My body had adapted to the harsh conditions of this new life much quicker than my mind. Once that happened though, would I still be the man I wanted to be or just the man I needed to be.

Tracy’s hand seared my flesh as she touched my side. The heat from her hand flooded my senses. That mere, sheer, sensuous touch reeled me back in. My body reacted in the way it had been meant to since the beginning of evolution (or the Garden of Eden, I don’t want to deny anyone their due).

“You look tired Talbot, but you look a lot like you did the day we got married.”

I turned towards her. I was a Marine when we got married so it only seemed right that I should be at the position of attention now. If you do not know what I am referring to, just take a moment to reread this part and then rethink it. I’ll wait…...got it?

Tracy laughed. “Yep that looks a lot like it used to when we got married too, Mike.”

“And?”

“Not a chance.” She threw my clothes at me and laughed harder when my boxer briefs got hung up on their own personal hanger. “Get dressed, I want to get out of here, before we bring any more trouble on these people.”

“Are BT and Jen ready?” I asked as my ‘hanger’ drooped and dropped its ‘load’ so to speak.

“Mike, they’ve been ready for over half an hour. You were in the shower for forty five minutes. How the hell you could stand it, I’m not sure.”

“Forty five minutes?” I could scarcely believe it myself.

“Maybe if you had got out sooner.” She said tauntingly.

“Oh that’s fair!” I yelled. “Now you tell me!”

“Maybe next time.” She said wistfully as she left the room to let me get dressed.

“I hope there is a next time.” I said to the closed door.

Within five minutes I was dressed and back outside. The brisk January North Dakota winter had nothing on the cold I had just endured both physically and spiritually. It almost felt balmy in retrospect.

BT was at the railing smoking another cigarette.

“I didn’t know you smoked.” I commented as I put out my hand to take a drag.

“I don’t.” He replied as he handed it to me. “And you?”

“Me neither.” I said as I took a big draft of the sweet leaf. I savored my long exhalation of the vapor. “You know BT, you don’t have to come with us?”

“I know that Talbot.” He said as he took his cigarette back.

“You know that throng out there is coming for us right?”

“I know that too Talbot.” He said as he handed the cigarette back to me.

“If we left here and you and Jen stayed behind. You’d be safe, you know that right?”

“That I don’t know Talbot. Stop bogarting and give me my cigarette back. What kind of man would I be if I left you now?”

“A live one.” I answered honestly.

He laughed at that and tossed his used cigarette over the railing. The cherry fizzled and smoldered out in a puddle of blood. He didn’t notice, I did.

“What do you expect me to do Talbot?” He wasn’t questioning me so much as he was actually asking my opinion.

I shrugged my shoulders. “There’s a good chance BT that my road leads to a giant fiery dead end.”

“That seems better than whiling away my days with a lesbian and a shrew. I’m going to smoke another cigarette Talbot, weigh the consequences of my actions and then get in that fucking ugly ass minivan of yours.” My cue given, I left, saddened in the fact that I wasn’t going to get another drag of his cigarette.

I walked away just as Tracy was just becoming extracted from a hug with Maggie. “You’re getting better Talbot.”

“Huh?”

“I saw you smoking that cigarette.”

“Aw shit, didn’t mean for you to see that.”

“Relax I wasn’t talking about that I meant that two months ago you would haven’t taken that cigarette from the Pope himself even if he had blessed it and dipped it in Holy Water first.”

“Huh. I hadn’t even thought about it.”

She rose up on her tiptoes and kissed me. “You taste like an ashtray.” And with that she walked away to descend down the ladder.

I gave Jen the same opportunity of Rights of Refusal to leave our merry band of misfits her answer while different from BT’s was eerily similar.

“Would it be better if I spent the rest of my days with a muscle headed man and a shrew?”

Tommy was crying as he disengaged from Maggie. “Are you sure Miss Maggie you won’t take some of these?” Tommy asked as he shoved his pillow full of Kit-Kats at her.

“Oh no dear, they just get stuck in my teeth and I never did have much of a sweet tooth.”

Tommy cocked his head to the side, like she had just uttered the craziest thing in the world. “Really?” His earlier distress somewhat relieved.

Tommy and I were the only ones of our gang left upstairs. I went over and gave Greta a perfunctory hug. I could feel her tense up as I moved in. I’ve gripped furniture that had more love in it. Maggie was the complete opposite. She apparently had enough love for the both of them. Her tears nearly soaking through my jacket.

“Maggie let him go.” Denmark chided her softly. “You’re gonna suffocate him.”

“I’m not going to do any such thing.” She told him but the mild rebuke seemed to work as she let me go.

“Thank you Denmark.” I shook the older man’s hand. “This has been a respite I will not soon forget.”

“You had better not.” He answered me, his lip quivered a bit but the staunch old bastard didn’t let any tears fall.

Once down in the car we all took our turns to wave. I beeped the horn as we headed North to our next destination.

Tommy kept turning so that he could keep seeing the motel. It wasn’t until it was completely out of view that he spoke. “They’re not going to make it through the winter.”

Brendon nearly slammed into my rear end as I screeched to a stop.

“What if we stay, Tommy?” I asked of him.

He shook his head. “They’ll die quicker.”

“FUCK!” I yelled as I slammed my hands on the steering wheel. Brendon had a hard time keeping up as I slammed my gas pedal to the floor.

CHAPTER 20

We had been cruising down the highway for a couple of hours, distance doing little to help me forget about the Gustovs (Denmark’s family name). How many times I wanted to turn back around, only to have Tommy’s words bubble to the surface. I could only pray that our visit to him was not what hastened the Gustov’s demise. The ride was passing in a moody silence. Nobody in the car was talking and I don’t think anyone would have listened. So when Tracy offered to drive because she knew the rest of the way, I relented. She’d be hard pressed to find anything worth hitting in this desolate white-blanketed landscape.

A few minutes later I found myself drifting in and out of sleep. Only occasionally being awakened as Tracy would jerk the wheel as if she were just remembering that she was driving and might want to keep the ton and a half van between the painted lines. Sleep grabbed hold and even Tracy’s quick wheel movements could not shake the veil of it from me.

The one good thing about being alive during the age of the zombies was that nightmares no longer had any power. What’s so scary about the boogeyman coming to get you and your legs feeling like lead? That sensation of not being able to run, the fear that pumped through your veins, the monster coming! And then blissful awareness, your mother scooping you up in her arms kissing your sweat-pocked forehead. ‘It was all a dream, everything’s fine.’ She would coo. Not my mother mind you, but someone’s mother would. My mother was too narcissistic to care why I had the nerve to wake her up in the middle of the night when I was child.

No, these days I tended to dream in the idyllic, where a gentle breeze or a beautiful sunset would be punctuated by the appearance of a unicorn or maybe Bambi, only then to awaken in hell. Where monsters were real and no matter how fast and how far I ran they were always right behind me. That was far scarier than any nightmare my mind could have ever imagined. And come to think of it, no matter how many times my legs got mired in deep grass or heavy mud or ultra shag carpeting, the boogeyman never caught me. Not once. Would I be that lucky in real life?

I was coming to alertness in degrees, between the incessant beeping of some asshole’s horn and a not so gentle nudging. I was grudgingly letting go of my tentative grip on being figuratively dead to the world. Tracy’s hand slipped off my shoulder and into my jaw. That concluded what little of my subconscious remained in dreamland.

“Mike." Tracy shook me again even though I was obviously awake. “Brendon is flashing his lights and beeping his horn.”

“Got the horn part.” I said as I gripped my jaw. “Maybe it’s your driving.”

“Ha, ha. No I think he needs something.”

“Then pull over.” Well that seemed simple enough, problem solved.

“No I started slowing down and he started flashing his lights faster, I think Coley was pointing to something behind us.”

I sat up fast. No way the zombies could be that close. I dreaded what I would see when I turned around. BT opened his eyes as soon as I had turned around. He looked up at me. He could see my anxiety. “What is it Talbot?” BT asked without turning to look himself.

“Don’t know, don’t see anything yet.” We both let out a sigh of relief.

“Good grief. My two big badasses.” Tracy said.

I puffed out some indignation. And then I saw it. It was far away but it was distinct. “It’s a truck, no its two of…wait no its three of them.” A coldness swept across me. I don’t know why, maybe some of Tommy’s prescience had rubbed off on me, more than likely it was just my heightened awareness of paranoia.

“Aw Talbot, you got that look on you.” BT lamented.

“What look, BT?” Tracy asked, looking in vain in the rear view mirror to see what had my panties all up in a roar.

“Oh that look that says troubles coming.”

“Yeah and its driving three white Ford pickup trucks, probably F-350’s by the size of them. Travis?” I shook him awake. He came to full consciousness in under a handful of heartbeats.

“Yeah dad?”

“Start handing out guns.” I told him without ever taking my eyes off of the rapidly approaching trucks. He didn’t question me. He didn’t hesitate. Within thirty seconds we were all outfitted with our favorite projectile lobber. I motioned to Brendon through the rear windshield that he should do the same as I pointed vigorously to my rifle. He held his up in response. He was of the same ilk that I was.

“Do you want to drive Mike?” Tracy asked.

There were pros and cons to that question. The pros being that I could have her hide under the dashboard and into some semblance of safety. The cons were my shooting would be seriously hampered and we would have to pull over to make the change. Our pursuers, if that was what they were, would make up some valuable time.

“Mike?” She asked looking for a response to her earlier query. I was still in the midst of weighing options. “Should I speed up?”

“God no!” BT shouted.

I inwardly laughed. Tracy’s driving was suspect to begin with. Tracy driving with speed was tantamount to suicide by light pole.

Tracy turned all the way around to fix her steely eyed gaze full bore on BT.

“The road.” He said meekly. “Eyes on the road.” He pointed at his own as if to illustrate the point. “You gonna help me here Talbot?”

“You’re on your own man.”

After what seemed like an indeterminable amount of time she finally relented, feeling that she had made her point, she turned back to the highway.

“Holy fuck.” BT mumbled.

“You say something BT?” Tracy asked angrily as she adjusted the rear view mirror to look at him. “I didn’t think so.” She said. When he didn’t answer immediately.

We waited, not as long as we wanted, but longer still than it seemed due to the tension. Tracy was traveling at a steady 65, our chasers must have been doing a pavement chewing 100 or so with the way they were gaining on us.

BT and I were now completely turned around, fixated on the chasers.

“Any chance they’re military?” BT asked hopefully.

“Doubt it.” I answered.

“Fellow survivors?” He queried.

“Well they’re survivors alright, but I don’t think they are of the fellowship type.” I knew BT was going to keep piecemealing questions together until he got to the heart of my unease. I didn’t give him the chance. “It’s those damn white trucks, like they all had to get the same damn thing, like a gang. Normal folks just trying to get through the day wouldn’t give a shit about what they were driving, so long as they were driving away from a shit storm. And the way they’re driving.”

“Maybe they just need some help.” Tracy interjected.

“Don’t squash my neurotic obsessions, Hon, they tend to keep us alive.”

The lead truck had made its way to Brendon’s wake. There was no waving, no horn beeping, no headlights flashing, no daisy throwing, no American flags.

“So much for needing help.” I said sourly.

“It was just a suggestion.” Tracy said peevishly, thinking that I was belittling her comment.

I was about to foolishly reply. It was my innate ability to get into trouble when no such thing existed, when I was saved by BT.

“Talbot.” He said getting my attention back.

The lead truck was pulling up alongside Brendon’s minivan, the trailing two Ford’s filled in the vacant gap, one on each side of the roadway. I saw a yellow gap toothed, mullet donning man, ironically wearing a Chevy hat lean out of the passenger side door. He was looking straight down and into the smaller vehicle. His lascivious grin was evident even from this distance. I watched as he ducked back into the truck, he held up two fingers and laughed. I was sort of impressed that he had the ability to count.

“What’s he doing?” Tracy asked nervously looking through her rear view mirrors.

“Counting.” BT filled in.

“Counting what?” Tracy asked.

“Women.” I said coldly.

“Dad.” Travis said alarmed. “There are guys in the back of the truck.”

I had been so fixated on the cab I hadn’t looked. How the fuck I had missed them was beyond me. Three armed men were standing attached to some sort of harness device to a roll bar in the back.”

“What the fuck are they doing?” BT asked.

“They’re strapped in to the truck so they don’t fall out when they try to take us over.”

“Take us over? What are you talking about Mike?” Tracy asked, her fear almost ended the confrontation right there and then. She had let her foot come off the accelerator and our minivan was slowing at an alarming rate while Brendon was intent on keeping an eye on the truck next to him was inadvertently pressing down on the accelerator in a vain attempt to get out from the situation. He actually tapped our bumper before Tracy realized what was happening. Redneck number one thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. He motioned to the driver to speed up.

Within seconds our newfound guests were along our broadside. Redneck #1 was even uglier up close, his pock marked face must have made him a true charmer in high school. If not for rape, farm animals or his sister I was sure he would have never been laid. He leaned back in. My heart stilled as I watched him mouth the words ‘Only one’, and then he laughed. Before they sped up to get in front of us he leaned back out and made a ‘V’ sign with his fingers, his long tobacco stained tongue flicked back and forth in the base of the sign.

“Fuck you!” I yelled leaning over Tracy’s lap.

He laughed and spit out some chew, he motioned for the driver to pull ahead.

“Fuck. Tracy you can’t let him pull ahead.”

“Why not, maybe they’ll just keep going.” She said.

“Remember that talk we had a few years back about the Easter bunny and how he isn’t real.”