A Plague Upon Your Family

“Fuck you Talbot.”

“That’s the Tracy, I’m looking for. Do not let him pull ahead of us, once he does those three gunmen in the back have us.”

Tracy’s foot turned to molten lead. The Terrible Teal machine for all its ugliness, gave us all she had. Redneck number one was motioning for his driver to go faster. His expression, a cross between wonder and anger.

He was never going to hear me but I said it anyway. It was more of uplifting to us in the car anyway. “You picked the wrong caravan to waylay, dipshit. We’re not your typical sheep.”

He might not have heard me but my crazy grin, I could tell, had unsettled him some. He was yelling at the driver. The truck was inching forward, the cab of their truck was now even with our front grill.

“Tracy.”

“I’m trying damnit!” She screamed. The minivan whined under the strain. Brendon and the two chaser trucks fell behind. The tachometer was buried in the red. I could hear the hamsters in the engine caterwauling for their lives. The Ford fell back a couple of inches or the minivan surged, tough to tell at 120. The three men in the back were even with us but seemed much more intent on holding on for dear life than firing off any rounds. We were creeping even. Tracy was sweating bullets. Oh, nope that was me. I was dripping all over her while I leaned over to get a better vantage point.

“Talbot, get the fuck off my lap.” She said in a strained voice.

“Oh right, sorry. It’s going to get loud in here real soon, you ready.”

She spared a split second to look over at me. The strain of the event was beginning to wear on her. “They still haven’t done anything Mike.”

“Yeah and I’m not going to give them chance.”

Tommy picked this most inopportune time to talk. “I watched a special on the History Channel the night before the deaders came.”

BT turned to look at him, even Tracy hazarded a glance. When Tommy spoke and it wasn’t in regards to Pop-Tarts, you definitely wanted to listen.

“It was about Pearl Harbor and how the Japanese had struck before they had declared war. It was something that they still regret having done. It wasn’t honorable.”

FUCK Honor, this was our lives!!! My decision was now not sitting well with the rest of the occupants of the car. We were all 99% sure of the intentions of the truck but there was still that one fucking percent chance they were just creeps, nothing worse. Tracy had pulled up completely even. The engine was in danger of throwing a rod. Redneck number one opened up the back window to the truck bed. The ugly fuck erased all doubts of their purpose. Even over the howling wind, it was impossible to not hear his words. I believe in my heart it was divine intervention we heard him at all. The physics of the speed we were traveling at and the whipping of the wind through the windows made thinking a difficult prospect. But we all heard him as clear as if we were having tea in a library.

“Don’t shoot the woman, kill the rest.”

I turned to Tommy, relatively sure he was the one that controlled the divine intervention.

He nodded to me, an intense glare shown through his eyes, pain, rage and sorrow warred for his attention.

“They’re readying their weapons Talbot!” BT yelled, rivaling the explosions that were about to be issued forth.

“Tracy this is gonna suck.” I said as I half crawled over her, stickin the barrel of my AR out the window.

“Just get it done.” She said through clenched teeth.

Travis hopped into the rear of the minivan. I jumped when he smashed out the large side glass window.

Our furtive movements did not go unnoticed. One of the gunmen had got so nervous he dropped the magazine to his rifle. Like two warships of old we broadsided each other.

“FIRE!” I yelled.

Bullets screamed! Lead struck. Metal, plastic, rubber and wood shattered under the assault. The noise was deafening and the clouds of smoke were blinding. Screams of savagery and pain were muffled by the explosions. The gunman closest to us was fatally struck. He leaned forward and pitched out of the truck bed. His crudely fashioned harness had not saved him from the disgrace of being unceremoniously dragged along the side of the truck. Redneck number one watched as his friend bounced and skipped along on the ground. A smear of blood and bone trailed for miles. Talk about chumming for zombies. BT roared in pain as a bullet struck. I didn’t have the time to look how bad. I was fumbling with a new magazine. My thinking was that if he had enough life in him to scream, then he was still breathing. Travis’ shotgun ripped through the rear quarter panel of the truck, fuel was leaking from their truck like a sieve. Our front windshield exploded outwards, Tracy yelled and swerved and she smashed sideways into the truck. The impact loosened the body of the hijacker. He tumbled backwards, seemingly gaining new heights as he bounced like a super ball. His springiness landed him onto the windshield of one of the trailing trucks. Our luck wasn’t strong enough to hope he would take them out. They swerved sharply but recovered quickly.

We had all been watching the macabre accident. As I turned back around I caught the gaze of redneck number one. We locked onto each other for a heartbeat. I could feel his malice.

“Kill them all!” He screeched so loud, Tommy’s special skills weren’t needed.

A renewed vigor of bullets whined through our shell-pocked car. The cars were going so fast, the slightest imperfection in the roadway made anything less than a pure luck shot damn near impossible. But that didn’t keep Travis from pumping round after round into the shredded gas tank. I kept waiting for the Hollywood explosion but apparently they only know how to do that in Hollywood. It never happened.

Wisps of smoke emanated from our chase minivan. Brendon and Jen had joined into the fray. Sometime during our sea battle they had pulled in behind the leading Ford and were now adding their two cented lead. The two gunmen in the rear swung their attention to the new threat.

“Wrong move motherfuckers.” I took a calming breath and unloaded a full magazine into them. They danced like marionettes on springs as round after round of high-powered steel jacketed rounds burst through their bodies. Blood arced, teeth shattered. Their paid out bodies dropped faster than my spent bullet casings. My reverie was short lived as redneck number one had at some point pulled out a Desert Eagle 45 and was busy trying to place a hole in my forehead. The top of our steering wheel exploded into fragments of ragged materials. It was long moments after that thunderous concussion that I noticed there were no more shots being fired. The odds were beyond hope that the spectacular weapon had jammed or the idiot was too dim to keep it fully loaded. No Travis’s fuel tank shredding tactic had come to fruition. I watched as redneck number one slammed his fists in frustration against his dashboard. I would have loved to hear his expletives. By the way he was going I was convinced I would learn some new and interesting words and colorful phrases.

“Talbot, I’m hit.” BT said through a clamped mouth.

Fucken reality. “Shit where BT?”

He moved his hand slightly on his thigh, blood pulsed through his fingers.

“Is it bad?” He asked without looking down.

‘Fuck if I know?’ “Naw it’s only a flesh wound.”

“Yeah but it’s my flesh.” He said trying to joke.

Tracy had completely turned around and over her shoulder to look at the wound. Sure we weren’t going the earth shattering speed of 120, but at 70 we could still get into a lot of trouble real quickly. “Do you want me to stop?” She asked.

“Can’t.”

“What?” She asked incredulously.

“Do you think our friends back there are going to stop? They’re just transferring their stuff over and will be following us in a minute or two.”

Tracy looked over to BT. “He’s right.” BT answered.

Now I’m no doctor and I didn’t even play one on TV, but even if BT's wound wasn’t fatal now, I could tell he would bleed out sooner rather than later.

“Fuck that.” Tracy said quietly.

I was thrown against the passenger door violently as she did something physics wise I didn’t think was possible. She had u-turned a minivan at 70 miles per hour and we didn’t violently flip down the roadway. Somehow Tommy had had the foresight to grip the roof- mounted handgrip and hadn’t even lost a beat as he popped what appeared to be the remainder of a Kit-Kat bar into his mouth. It would have been humorous if I wasn’t pinned nearly upside down by the g-forces being applied to my body. Brendon respected applied pressures (even if Tracy didn’t) and slowed his car down to a saner but still scary 45 miles per hour before he tried to do the same maneuver. Within a quarter mile he was alongside our right side.

He nearly shattered his voice to be heard above the whistling wind as it came in through our now defunct windshield. “What’s going on Mike?”

I wanted to give him the full story about BT’s injury and the need to get him some attention and quickly. Being succinct seemed more prudent. “We’re going to finish what they started.” He nodded gravely to my words. Jen had replaced Nicole in the front seat and was busy loading her extra magazines. There was a barbarous set to her features. BT was breathing laboriously through the haze of pain as Travis and Tommy fashioned a crude tourniquet on his upper thigh.

“Dad I think it broke his leg but we got the blood stopped.”

“Holy shit BT, does it hurt?” I asked stupidly. It’s common knowledge that there is no greater pain on the planet than a broken femur, yet he hadn’t cried out since the initial shot that caused his injury.

“What do you think Talbot.” BT winced as Tommy pulled the slipknot tighter on the tourniquet.

I winced in sympathy with him. And then like an idiot, I let my thoughts wander and wonder. Is a broken leg worse pain than say, someone gripping one of your nuts in a pair of pliers and crushing it? Oh, God, I nearly vomited at my own speculation. Better not to go there at all.

Within thirty seconds of cresting a small rise in the road, our quarry was in sight. The hunters had become the hunted. Redneck number one might be an asshole but he wasn’t a dipshit. While his traveling companions were staring at awe at us as we bore down on them, he was punching and cajoling and kicking them into action. They were nearly done with the transfer of supplies and the unceremonious disposal of their brethren when we had come upon them. If they got behind the wheels of those trucks and got them moving this was going to become a very dangerous game of chicken.

I saw Tracy hesitate. She wasn’t sure if she should keep going or turn around. The odds of making another 70 mile per hour u-turn unscathed weighed heavily against us. She pinned the gas pedal down. I tasted tooth fragments as my head slammed into the dashboard. Tracy had used the minivan like a guided missile as she smashed the living fuck out of the nearest redneck that had not been thoroughly convinced to get his ass moving. His ass was moving now, at least what was left of it. His broken body hurtled into the air like he carried his own jetpack. I prayed that I would not be able to hear the sound his body made when it struck back to earth. What was not already broken would shatter like dry sticks under a heavy moose’s hoof. I barely had time to recover as Tracy peeled the car off to the left. I’d like to say she narrowly missed the parked truck but that would be an outright lie. The shower of sparks and the squeal of metal on metal would have made me a liar. The caustic smell of burning paint assaulted my nostrils. Sparks showered my lap looking for fuel to grow into a larger version of itself. A loud tell-tale report let me know that someone’s tire had burst. I could only hope it wasn’t ours. I was thinking it was going to be a bitch to get triple A out here on such short notice.

And then it was over. The metallic burnt smell whisked out of our car. The din of war was reduced to just wind coming though our various new ventilation systems. Brendon had come through the far side in much better shape than us. They had decided wisely to use more conventional weapons. They had struck at least two and possibly a third man. What was left of our would-be hijackers would fit comfortably in a tollbooth. Tracy had tears streaming down her face as the stress finally wore her down. How the hell she could see through the stream of tears and the shear of wind through the dispersed windshield was once again something that eluded me.

“Tracy.” I said softly. She looked over. “We need to go back.” She didn’t question my sanity she merely acknowledged my words. BT was near to passing out as his eyes were beginning to roll up into his head. “Do you want me to drive?”

She turned the car around and sped back to the trucks. That was sufficient answer for me. This time, however, there was no call to arms as Redneck number one and one of his militia sprinted out into the snow-covered field. Throwing their weapons to the side as they did so.

“So much for comrades in arms.” I said as I pointed to the lone injured gunmen that hobbled desperately to keep up with his fleeing leader. By the time we were abreast of the trucks, the two lead runners were nearly out of sight and didn’t look like they were going to stop any time soon. The injured one had fallen over maybe a hundred yards away and seemed to be rapidly succumbing to whatever injury had taken him down. “Stop.” I told Tracy.

Now she did question my sanity in a backfire of neatly phrased expletive words. I was duly impressed.

“Hon.” I placed my hand on her shoulder. “We need to work on BT. Plus, how far do you think we can go in this cold weather without a windshield? I’m already freezing my ass off and I must have a couple of quarts of adrenaline running through me.” She didn’t think I was any saner but she did as I asked. I knew appealing to a lack of warmth would get to her. I have the heating bills to prove it.

I shivered as I went through the contents of the trucks. Not because of the cold but because of what they contained. There were handcuffs, zip ties, duct tape, rope, a variety of knives and what could only be described as medieval torture tools. Everything the home rapist could wish for. Jen had been more and more disgusted as we moved from cargo hold to cargo hold. There was food and medical supplies and even some oxycodone, which I knew BT would appreciate. But interlaced with this were the true purport of what these animals were up to. There was s&m magazines strewn about that would only arouse the sickest and twisted that society had to offer. Polaroids’ of previous victims spilled out from the glove compartment as I searched through the truck. These pictures made the magazines seem tame in comparison. The reality of how close we were to disaster struck me physically. I could see the tortured faces of my wife and daughter in these pictures of misery. These women and girls screamed in agony as every inconceivable act of depravity was forced upon them. I had not noticed Jen as she peered over my shoulder. I bumped into her as I had grabbed the pictures and was headed for the nearest snow bank, no one else needed to see this.

She walked wordlessly away from me as I dug a hole in the snow and tossed the offending images in, covering them quickly. Fearful that the infused evil on them would seep through my gloves I hastily wiped snow vigorously on them. Two pistol shots pulled me away from my infected finger wear. Jen was standing in the field over the prone body of our intended assailant. If he had had a flicker of life in him before, Jen had made sure to extinguish it. I felt no pity. I don’t think that under his tutelage our demises would have been so ‘clean’ for lack of a better word.

Tracy hadn’t flinched at Jen’s actions. I rightly assumed she must have come across her own grotesque cache of monstrous mementos.

“I can’t find an exit wound on BT. I’m pretty sure that bullet is lodged on his bone.”

I turned to her. My eyes just plain felt heavy. If there were such thing as a stressometer, mine was rapidly red lining. I was pretty good at field sutures and staunching blood flow, even setting the occasional bone, but this would require full on surgery. There was no way around it. I blanched at the prospect, sewing torn skin was vastly different from intentionally cutting someone open and feeling around for a bullet. Rooting around in muscle and tissue, making sure to not nick any major arteries while also insuring that I did not cut myself on any of his bone fragments was not doing me any favors. Pondering, leads to hesitation, which leads to mistakes.

“Brendon, hey man come over here. You’ve got to help me get BT into the truck bed.”

“I’ll help Mr. T.” Tommy said as he handed a bottle of whisky to Tracy.

Tommy’s helping turned into a one-man wonder show. If I hadn’t been watching it with my own eyes, I would have cried ‘bullshit’ and still I almost did. Short of having an engine lift I don’t know how Tommy could do it. It wasn’t with the ease he had displayed during the Wal-Mart encounter but still I watched in awe as Tommy hefted the burly giant BT out of the minivan. Twenty feet later he gently placed the big man in the bed of the truck as Brendon and Travis had hopped up on the back of the truck to help.

“Tracy put a couple of those smaller knives to flame.” I said as I grabbed the bottle of liquor from her.

“What do you need that for?” She asked.

“Disinfectant.” I told her, right before I unscrewed the cap off and took a long pull of the bitter, burnt gasoline derivative.

“Yeah disinfectant.” She said as she went to sterilize some knives.

Jen had returned, seemingly no worse for the wear. She looked basically like she had just returned from taking out the garbage and I guess in reality that was all she had really done. She grabbed the bottle from me. I felt a little ashamed as she made my rather significant drag from the bottle seem child-like in comparison. She wiped her sleeve over her mouth before she spoke. The tenor of her voice belied her true feelings to a point, but not completely.

“What are you doing Talbot? Besides drinking this rot gut. Oh what I wouldn’t do for a nice Pinot Noir.” She took another long pull.

“Uh, could you save me some, I need it for BT.”

She smiled abashedly. “Sorry.” She said as she absently wiped her mouth again. “For what?”

“Huh?”

“Why do you need this?” as she shook the bottle in front of my face, not really handing it back.

“The bullet didn’t come out, I’ve got to go in and get it.”

“Have you ever done that?” Now thrusting the bottle into my hands. I guess she thought whoever possessed the bottle had to perform the surgery.

“I filled in pot holes, Jen. Not much call for field surgery in that line of work.”

“What about before that?” She grasped.

“Oh yeah sure, I left a lucrative and life fulfilling job as a highly skilled surgeon to live the prosaic life of a road crew man. Filling holes seemed a much nobler profession.”

“Don’t go there Talbot. Don’t cover over your insecurities with sarcasm. You know what I mean.”

I sighed. I knew what she meant. She was asking if I had I ever had the need to put any of my friends back together after some raghead had done their best to make Humpty Dumpty fall. “I’m sorry.” I told her. “No there was never time during the heat of battle to help and by the time the last bullets had flown they would be medi-vacced out. Some I got to visit in the hospital while they recovered. Others I watched as their bodies got loaded on a plane and headed back home.”

She witnessed the pain in my eyes as I pulled the band-aid off a wound that would not heal. “I’m sorry Mike.”

“Me too.” I took another pull of the disgusting concoction while leaning over a moaning BT who was luckily still passed out. How long he was going to remain in that status while I delved into his leg was another story all together.

“One for me.” I took another swig. “And one for you.” As I poured a liberal amount of the elixir into the wound.

BT’s eyes flared open. Fiery pain seared across his brain plate. He looked right at the source of this intrusion. “What the fuck are you doing Talbot!?” The gods shook under the assault of those words.

It must have been the warmth of the liquor as it spread throughout my body. I felt no fear, only resolve as I explained to BT what was happening. It was tough to tell which of us was more detached as I clinically laid out my plan. I sounded scholarly as I slurred my way through the procedure. BT nodded at all the right moments. I handed him two oxycodones and the bottle. He didn’t shun either one away or question what they were.

I’m going to wait until those kick in and then I’m going to start.” I reached out to grab the bottle back.

“Think you’ve had enough.” He grinned savagely, the pain distorting his features. “I’d appreciate it if you got started now instead of waiting, not sure how much longer I can keep this macho shit up, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to cry in front of a woman. The last time I did that, I was six and my mom had just whopped me upside the head for writing on the walls with peanut butter. Don’t ask.” He told me, just as I was about to.

Tracy came over with three knives, one still smoldering a dull red from the heat. BT looked at the blade and then back at me. “You know what you’re doing right? Wait don’t answer, I don’t want to know.” He finished the bottle. It clattered loudly to the ground as he threw it over the side. I placed a shirt under his head as I gently pushed his head back down.

“You want something to bite on?” I asked him seriously.

“Why you think this is going to hurt?” He laughed. He then set his eyes hard, on some distant object high above our locale. I hoped for his sake it was God. The call of a lone falcon was the only sound as I plunged the knife into the bullet hole. Tears silently streamed down BT’s face as I made the hole big enough so that I would be able to plunge my fingers in.

“You sure you don’t want to wait until those pills take affect?” Sweat froze on me as fast as it formed.

A curt shake of his head kept me going. My respite was not to happen. BT went rigid as I submerged first one and then a second finger into his bloody laceration. The sheer size of BT’s thighs meant I was going to have to go deep in my attempt to find the foreign body. Lady luck was going to have to be on my shoulder for this. If the bullet had struck and tumbled away I’d never find it. I had gone in as far as my two fingers were going to allow and not struck home yet. There was a hollow sucking sound as I pulled my fingers out of the wound. Nobody commented, but I could hear more than one disgruntled stomach recoil at the noise.

“I’ve got to make the hole bigger BT.” I wanted to apologize.

“Can’t get much worse.” He replied. I’m glad he didn’t realize then that he was wrong.

My hand was steadier as I made the second lengthening incision. BT didn’t flinch at all when I stuck my whole hand in up to the knuckle. A potent combination of Jack Daniel’s, Oxycodone and shock were all taking affect those plus the minding numbing cold. I concentrated hard on the fact that I was merely feeling around in some beef. Sure it was warm bloody steak but it was steak nonetheless and that was what was going to let me keep going. If I were to dwell on the reality of the situation, BT would end up dying from infection. My hand was relatively warm compared to the rest of my body, encased as it was in the living tissue of my friend. That being the case, my fingers were not numb and were therefore able to detect when I brushed up against something that didn’t have a right to be where it was. Relief was my immediate thought. Relief to rid BT of the bullet and relief to get my hand out of his thigh.

I oriented the foreign material as best I could so as to not damage anything more on its way out. What I removed was not a bullet, not unless they were white about an inch long and a quarter inch wide. Tracy was the first to recognize what I had removed, I could tell by the sounds of her retching, although the others weren’t far behind. The splintered bone fragment shone brightly in the noonday sun. I hastily tossed it before BT had the chance to see it.

“Wasn’t it was it.” BT said resignedly.

I shook my head and dove my hand back in. No sense in stalling at this point. For fifteen minutes I pulled various sized pieces of bone out, most no bigger than a toothpick. Two or maybe three fragments were taken out, roughly the size of my pinkie. I didn’t think there was going to be any bone left to knit together when I was through. Blood coated the bottom of the truck bed. BT was drifting in and out of consciousness. My time line for success was rapidly diminishing. Either I got the bullet or the bullet got BT. It was that simple of an equation but one in which I’m sure was never up on any algebra teacher’s chalk board.

“Where is the fu…got it!” I could tell by the mushroom shape this wasn’t another bone fragment. BT couldn’t share in my elation, he had passed out, I think. “Jen?”

Jen had earlier hopped up on the bed of the truck to help. “He’s still breathing.” She answered. “But its thready.”

“That sounds mighty ERish.” I said triumphantly as I pulled the bullet free from its human stockade.

“What can I say, I had a crush on the triage nurse, Margulies on that show.” She said as a smile spread across her face as she also saw the bullet. “Now what?”

“Well I’ll sew him up, we’ll set and splint his leg as well as possible and then we’ll get out of Dodge.”

“I meant what about internal damage.”

“From the bullet or my ministrations?”

“Well probably both.” She said honestly.

“Shit Jen, I’m already 5 orders of magnitude above my pay grade. I can only sew him up and hope his body will take care of the rest. IF he’s lucky he’ll only have a pronounced limp when he can walk again.”

“Worst case scenario?”

“Are you kidding me? Do you see the blood we’re sitting in. Do you see how sterile an environment I’m working in. Or, better yet, my surgical skill level. The bullet looks fairly whole but I’m not completely sure I didn’t leave a piece of it in, plus there’s no way I got every bone fragment out but if I don’t close him up soon he’ll bleed out. Which may still happen depending on how many blood vessels, veins and arteries were damaged. That he’s alive up to this point is near miraculous. We’re going to have to pump him full of antibiotics for the next two weeks and pray.”

“Pray?” She looked at me incredulously.

“Figure of speech.” I said as I turned away. Seemed like the wrong time to spurn God, but I wasn’t feeling very pious at the time.

Within a half an hour I had closed the wound. Jen and Tommy had got him cleaned up and put new clothes that weren’t blood soaked on him. And then after getting him placed in the back of Brendon’s minivan, I set his leg in a close approximation of the position I felt it should be in. Two ax handles and a roll of duct tape completed my handiwork. It wasn’t pretty. He was going to be eating oxy’s like pez for the next month and we had about a week’s worth. Great, another stop on the journey. Those always go so well.

Another set of clothes down the drain, so to speak. The only thing salvageable on me was my shirt. The jacket had caught the brunt of arterial spray. I shivered on the side of the road as I stripped out of the stiff clothing.

Tracy had come up to me with a box of baby wipes to clean up with. I couldn’t have been more grateful if she had showed up with a cheeseburger right now.

She started laughing at me. There I was, nearly naked in the dead of winter on the side of a highway.

“Hey that’s not cool!” I yelled. “It’s because of the cold, it causes shrinkage you know. It’s like when you go swimming!” I was now yelling to her laughing retreating back. “Not cool.” I said angrily to myself as I washed up. I was still muttering angrily when I rejoined the rest of the caravan.

“What do you think Mike?” Brendon asked.

“Most people don’t have the nerve to ask that question Brendon. At least not open ended like that.”

“You really are nuts aren’t you?” He smiled

I left the question dangling. There really isn’t a way to answer it legitimately anyway. See Catch-22.

“Well Carol’s is still our ultimate goal, for now. But we’re going to need more antibiotics and more pain killers, which means another effen stop.”

He rolled his eyes.

“My sentiments exactly. I want to pack up the pick-up truck that isn’t all bloody because we’re taking it and then I want to completely disable the other. I don’t think Redneck Number One and Mullet Man are going to come back and claim it but I see no reason to tempt the fates. And most of all, I want to get the hell out of here.”

“What do you think about BT’s chances?”

“Well a normal person would probably be dead already so he’s got that going for him. Plus he’s too mean for heaven and hell doesn’t want the competition.” I didn’t get the expected laugh from my flippant remark. I guess he wanted an actual answer. Doesn’t he know I try to avoid those? “Fifty, fifty. I just don’t know how much damage he really has.” I left it at that.

“Mike one more thing.”

Those statements are never good. When someone waits until the very end of a conversation to bring something up, it’s usually because it has taken this long to build up the nerve to say it. “If you tell me my daughter is pregnant, I’m going to be pissed.”

“What?” His eyebrows knit together. “No wait? Huh? No, that’s not it. It’s Justin.”

“I know.”

“About the fever dreams, and Eliza?”

“I know.”

“What are you going to do about it?” He asked me.

“No clue.” I started to walk away.

“That’s it!” He yelled. “Seems to me that Justin has an open line with the enemy and you’re not going to do anything?” He said heatedly.

I stopped and turned. “Got any ideas? I’m all ears.” I meant what I said but my words were infused with malice. Brendon could feel the taint of vileness emanate from them but youth does not always heed to wisdom.

“Oh I think you know what needs to be done Mike! Aren’t you always the one that preaches the sacrifice of the one for the many?”

I didn’t hesitate one second from his words, though they struck me deep. “Take the other truck then.” I said. He physically stepped back, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t expecting that. I had basically told him he was welcome to leave, without Nicole. I had painted him in to a corner for that I felt a measure of guilt. He was as close to family as you can be without actually being family, a fine distinction, but a distinction nonetheless. I would choose family over others 100% of the time. It was as simple as that. By now we had drawn a crowd. This was starting to become commonplace. He shook with rage. If he came at me now I would have only one or two chances to take him down before his size, youth and speed overwhelmed me.

Travis breeched a round into his shotgun, Brendon turned towards him. Fear, hurt and betrayal spanned across his features in less than the span of a second. His shoulders drooped as he walked towards the bloody Ford. The passenger side tire was blown and Tracy had made sure when she scraped down the side of it, that it would never win ‘Best in Show’ but other than that, it was mechanically sound.

“We’ll wait until you get the tire changed.” I told him.

“Dad?” Nicole questioned. “What are you talking about?” I didn’t answer her. “Brendon, what are you doing?”

He didn’t answer her as he reached into the cab and got the jack and tire iron. She started tugging on his arm as he began to break the lug nuts on the tire.

“Brendon, you can’t leave us, me!” She cried. “Dad fix this.”

“He’s a big boy.” I said with an ice-cold edge.

“Talbot!” Tracy chimed in.

“What!” I yelled right back. I hadn’t even got to the ‘h’ in ‘What’ when I knew that was the wrong answer.

She didn’t even have to say ‘Really?’ Her arched eyebrow let me know how screwed I was.

Already down for a nickel, might as well increase the Talbot national debt. “You know what Tracy, if he wants to stay with us fine! But I’m not going over there and begging him to come. He doesn’t like the way things are shaking out right now. Why don’t you go see what his plans are. I’m sure you’ll be just as thrilled as I was. I’m going to pack the truck.” And with that I walked away.

Tracy now knew the root of the problem as she looked over to Justin, still sitting in the minivan. She shuddered as she saw the ghost of a smile play across his features. I had taken my time moving our stuff from the minivan to the truck in the hope that cooler heads would prevail, mainly Brendon’s. But for as slow as I was moving, Brendon was moving that fast, maybe he didn’t want to think about what he was doing because he’d realize just how fucking stupid he was being, dumb ass. I almost went over to him to start round 2, but I didn’t want to burden Travis with the guilt of having to shoot him.

Brendon kissed Nicole, and then gently pushed her trembling body away from his as he stepped into the cab of the truck.

“No Brendon!” She wept. “You can’t leave me!”

My heart was breaking for my daughter.

“I’m sorry.” I heard him yell through the closed windows.

I thought Nicole might try to get in the cab and go with him. I would have physically restrained her if it got to that point. I was thankful it didn’t. She stood stock-still and sobbed as Brendon started the truck, did an illegal u-turn and drove off. That was it, he left. We watched for a minute until he was a dot on the horizon. Tracy actually slid an arm across my waist and wept silently on my shoulder.

I put Nicole in the truck with me. She didn’t react at all as I put her seat belt on. Her head slumped against the cool glass.

“Jen you up for driving?” I asked her. Of us all she looked the most prepared. The Talbots as a whole had just suffered a crushing loss. This wasn’t the movies. We weren’t going to be all joking around in the next scene, one of our own was gone. Whether literally or figuratively didn’t really matter. We weren’t ever going to see him again. If he somehow survived on his own, which was doubtful, he would never know how to find us again. I was going to turn around and get him. I had made up my mind. BT changed it back.

His screams pierced the day. I ran over to him, shook out a couple of oxy’s and handed them to him. He swallowed them without water, the tears that leaked from his eyes causing enough lubricant to get the large pills down. Within minutes he had passed out again, not from the pills but from the pain.

“Let’s go, we’ve got to find a pharmacy.” There was no more milling about. We had a mission to complete now. We would have enough time later to mourn.

Tommy was nearly as catatonic as Nicole. He had really ratcheted up the empathy button. Tommy had a serious crush on Nicole. Everyone knew it, though somehow Tommy didn’t know we knew. That was the funny part about it. He would get so flustered around her that he would call her everything but her real name, and Brendon was ALWAYS, ‘that other guy’ or ‘him’. So of all of us, the big kid had the most to, ‘in theory’, gain. Though not in a millennium would he have ever conspired for this sort of outcome. He had taken on Nicole’s pain, not to ease, but to share.

CHAPTER 21

I don’t want to gloss over it. It was what it was though. We smashed into a pristine Rite Aid. We startled the zombiefied pharmacist and two techs even more than ourselves. We dispatched of them in the most humane way possible. It was a quick, precise, antiseptic kill. They were of the slow variety and maybe even a little slower since they probably hadn’t fed in weeks. That would be something to file and look back on later. I’ve always considered myself a glass half full type of guy but the fact that this store was relatively untouched disturbed me. Don’t get me wrong, I was absolutely ecstatic that we were getting the meds BT and Justin were going to need along with everything from toe nail fungus inhibitor to Viagra (I figured if we ever got to the point where Tracy wanted to have sex, I was going to make up for lost time.) The problem being that this store being virgin territory to looters meant that there weren’t enough people of the living variety around to do any looting. And to top that off Brendon’s leaving had had a crushing affect on us all. He had died to us, pure and simple, no matter what happened to him physically.

Nicole was inconsolable. I picked up every anti-depressant known to man. How I was going to administer them was beyond my scope though, maybe one of each. I knew things were at an all time low when I actually had to point out the Pop-Tart boxes to Tommy as he walked right on by them. Jen stayed with BT while we ransacked the store. she wasn’t nearly as devastated as the Talbots but it affected her too. We were already counting the number of us on two hands. Removing just one finger had a profound impact. As a viable fighting force we were in dire straits. We were down to Travis, Jen and me. Any opponent bigger and meaner than a girl scout troop and we were going to get our asses kicked, and by asses kicked, I meant killed.

I was sick of reflecting. The image coming back was horrible so when the horn sounded it was a welcome if at the same time ominous sound. If the world ever got back to some semblance of normality, I would never be able to drive again. The mere sound of someone beeping at me would send me into panic attacks. We all looked up like meerkats waiting for the hawk to descend. Travis was first to the door, shotgun at the ready. No matter how many zombies he killed or how long we survived, I was never going to get over the bounce in adrenaline my heart took every time he was exposed to danger. I couldn’t get the picture of him as a seven year old out of my head. Although I knew he was as capable if not more so to get us out of any sticky situation. I could almost watch him harden to the world by the hour. Whereas I felt I was heading the other way. Stop pondering! I ran to the door.

Jen had stepped out of the car, she didn’t seem too particularly out of sorts. She pointed to her left somewhat out of our view. I walked past the buggies and looked. Zombies were coming.

Travis came up beside me. “No speeders, that’s good.”

He had ascertained a fact that took me another few long moments to realize. “Nope.” I drawled out, making it look like I had known all along.

He looked up at me, no that’s not quite right, he slightly lifted his eyes to make them level with my own. ‘Holy Shit, when did that happen?’

“I’m gonna finish loading the truck.” He said as he turned.

A small wall of the living dead were coming our way, with what I would imagine was less than grand intentions and he gave less than two shits. Maybe a piss and a squirt, but that was about it.

He had already gone back into the store when I answered him. “Ok sounds good.”

Tommy came up beside me, seemingly more in character as he devoured a Hostess Cupcake. “Wanff onef?”

“You know what Tommy, I think actually I do.” I took the offered cupcake from him and we shared a moment there eating our cupcakes, watching the advancing zombies as if it were the most natural thing in the world, like maybe it was a sunrise. I guess it was more like a sunset and not quite so beautiful.

Tommy had at some time departed. I had somehow eaten a cupcake I couldn’t remember chewing and Travis had finished loading the truck bed.

“You coming Dad?” Travis asked with some concern. I guess I looked like the village idiot standing there. I would imagine I had chocolate on my face and I was gazing off into the distance, dimly aware that a viable threat was approaching.

“Uh yeah.” I answered as I absently dropped the cupcake wrapper clutched in my hand. I bent over and picked it back up disposing of it in a trash barrel that would never again be emptied. What was the point? I didn’t have one and I couldn’t see the reason to look for one.

“You alright Talbot?” My wife asked as I got behind the wheel.

“That noticeable?”

“We’ve been married a long time but even if I had just met you I’d be able to tell.”

The zombies were still coming and would soon be within bow and arrow range but still I turned to face and answer Tracy as if I had all the time in the world.

“Brendon?” She asked beating me to the punch.

“That’s definitely a big part of it. I’m not sure if I did more harm than good to BT. Chances are he’ll still die, whether from infection or my ineptitude.”

“Mike you saved him, what happens to him next is in God’s hands.”

“You still believe huh?” I asked her. In retrospect it was mean spirited and wasn’t going to help my bargaining power when I got to the pearly gates, provided that they actually existed.

Her facial features said it all, how dare I question what she did and did not believe in. I always used to give her a hard time that she didn’t believe in extra-terrestrials. I would pull out the arguments of how could their NOT be with the billions upon billions of solar systems and if only a billionth of those could support life there would still be an infinitesimal amount of probable planets that were capable of harboring life. She’d have nothing to do with it. She also used to scoff at me when I would sometimes let it leak that I was preparing for Armageddon in one of the many different ways it was bound to happen, including zombies. Being right sucked if you couldn’t rub the ones you loved noses’ in it. Maybe we’d luck out and Alpha Centauri would get their shit together and attack us. Then I could have a twofer. I laughed out loud.

“Something funny?” Her arched eyebrow let me know that I was beginning to tread on uneven ground.

Zombies to the front, Tracy to the side, I was weighing my options carefully.

“No, no I was just thinking about aliens.” I answered truthfully.

“What’s this got to do with Mexican’s Mike?”

I busted out laughing. If I had waited to start the truck and get out of the Rite-Aid parking lot AFTER I got myself under control, we would have made a wonderful lunch for the zombies. At this point I was thankful for the lack of traffic. My vision was distorted from the tears. Tracy glowered at me.

I had been in a foul mood for the majority of the day. I hadn’t completely pulled out from that dank place in my spirit but I had been granted a momentary reprieve. It was those small candles of light on this unlit path we lived on now that were going to sustain us all.

The drive up the highway was damn near uneventful, which in itself is a good thing. We saw an occasional bloated frozen cow or sheep. The more disturbing ones were picked to the bone. That could only mean one thing. There were some cars abandoned on the road, most likely from expired gas tanks. I pitied the fools that had got out to walk, and then I thought back to the bone frameworks previously mentioned. Nothing like a mass exodus had happened here. Sure North Dakota wasn’t known for its population explosion but still.

“Here Mr. T.” Tommy said as he handed me a heavy brown paper bag. Normally I would tell him to wait because I had to concentrate on driving. I was pretty sure some pimply faced teenager wasn’t going to be coming in the other direction texting his friend lying about who he had banged the night before.

“What you got here, Tommy?” I asked as I took the bag. Although from the weight of it and the feel of the glass bottle it couldn’t have been anything other than booze.

“I got you some Jeff Daniels.” He answered.

I laughed, again thankful for the small release of endorphins. “I think you mean Jack.”

“That’s what I said.” He answered.

“But why Tommy, you know I can’t stand the stuff.”

“Oh it’s not for you.” He answered with a smile.

Tracy turned to look him in the eye. A mischievous grin spread across his face. He knew something and he wasn’t going to spill all his beans at once.

“Tommy, I’ll hide your pop-tarts.” Tracy said, going right for the jugular. Dancing lightly around the subject had never been at the top of her repertoire. Tommy grabbed his backpack and pushed it behind himself. “I’m serious.” She added, making a mock attempt to reach around him. I watched in the rear view mirror as the sheer look of terror came over his face. It released an even bigger amount of happy juice into my veins. I didn’t laugh out loud though. If Tracy couldn’t get that bag from him she might make me try and I had no desire to be such an abject point of fear for the kid.

She resorted to less than honorable tactics. She started tickling him. Tommy’s face turned a bright crimson. His laughing shined everything around him. The minivan swayed down the highway as his bulk thrashed back and forth in a vain attempt to get away from her ministrations.

“Alright…alright.” He croaked out in between laborious inhalations of breath. When he had hesitated for a fraction more of a second longer than Tracy was willing to tolerate, she started up again. I felt for the kid, if he had been older I would have feared his heart wouldn’t be able to take much more. “I’ll tell!” He squealed. Snot, tears and chocolate goo coalesced in a pool on his shirt as he fought to regain control. On anyone else that would have been the most disgusting sight I had seen, on Tommy it was merely endearing. “Aw I messed up my Star Wars shirt.” Tommy said as he looked down at his belly.

“Tommy!” Tracy shouted as she held her hand up high in a claw like fashion, ready to strike and do more damage.

“Ok, ok stop, but my shirt.” Tracy’s hand got higher. “Your mom likes Jeff Daniels.”

“Jack” I said

He looked over towards me. “That’s what I said.”

Tracy looked over at me pissed that I was helping Tommy stall. I might be a big bad Marine but I’m as ticklish as a puppy. If she started that crap with me, this minivan would be cart-wheeling down the roadway in about ten seconds. “We’re good.” I said holding up my hands.

She redirected towards Tommy, convinced that I would no longer interfere with her. She was right.

“Ryan said your mom likes Jeff Daniels!” He yelled out before Tracy could descend back on him.

She sat back down hard in her seat, a look of bafflement, relief and wonderment across her face. After long seconds of processing the information she turned back towards Tommy.

“You sure?” She asked querulously.

Tommy beamed. No answer was necessary at that point.

“Ryan said my mom likes Jack Daniels?” Tracy reiterated, nearly sobbing.

“Yep Jeff Daniels.”

“Jack.” I said adding my penny and a half.

“That’s what I said.” Tommy said looking at me through the mirror like I had lost my marbles. The earnest way that he was looking at me made me wonder if maybe he had said Jack and I was slowly going insane. Okay so ‘slowly’ would probably be the wrong descriptor, something along the lines of breaking the speed of light might be more apt.

My eyebrows knitted of their own volition. “Tracy what did Tommy say?” I needed help.

“Oh Mike he said my mom was alright.” Now she was full on crying.

Now whether Tommy had said Jack or Jeff was open to debate, but not once did he say Carol Yentas was okay. Sure it was implied. Dead people don’t really like anything except maybe staying dead. I’d be damned though if I was going to be the one that pissed on her cheerios, rained on her parade, took a dump on her tulips, whatever. We had a glimmer of hope in a sea of somberness. The home team needed a win and right now Tommy was pitching a gem. Tracy fairly bounced in her seat the remaining hour of our journey. I could tell she was wavering with bouts of happiness and fits of caution. It is a tough thing to open one’s self to the prospect of something happening that is beyond the belief of what is expected and then once you attain that state of inner balance to have what you hoped for ripped from you.

To get the full effect of this analogy, just for a moment consider yourself a huge, NO HUGE Red Sox fan (like me) and it is the magical year of the lord nineteen hundred and eighty six and it is game six, the Sox are ONE FUCKING OUT from winning the World Series, something you never expected to see in your lifetime. You suck Babe Ruth! A dribbler, a DRIBBLER is hit up the first base line. I had literally along with all my friends popped that bottle of champagne. Cold liquor was bubbling all over my hand as I watched in disbelief as the ball went through BILLY BUCKNER’S legs. I had never known up to that point in life what getting a dream crushed felt like. It was something akin to running over rabbits with a lawn mower. Blood, fur and bone bits everywhere, yep it was pretty much like that. So I’m basically saying that I could empathize with her, in a roundabout way.

The rural road that led up to Carol’s, was for the mini-van, nearly impassable. It had seen some random traffic and if I kept the speed low enough I could follow in the barely visible grooves some other traveler had made. On two occasions some gentle bumper pushing from Jen had got me out of some deeper furrows.

“Maybe we should let Jen go first, she can make a better trail for us hon.”

Tracy’s unspoken look of ‘Not a fucking chance’ shut me up.

When we got to 7 Washburn Road, we were met with a sea of white. An unbroken blanket of snow a foot deep, it might as well have been a moat, there was no way this car was getting through it. The old Victorian style house was set a good two hundred yards off the roadway but even from here it was impossible to not see the blotches of crimson that dotted the yard.

“Talbot is that blood?” Tracy asked. We both saw the giant dream-crushing boot hovering over us. “Where are the bodies?”

“My guess is under the snow.” My thoughts however traveled a little darker. I figured that they had got what they came for and had long since left. Tracy had started to fumble with the door lock. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m going up there.” She said matter-of-factly. “I’ve got to see what happened.” She gulped.

“Hold on. You can’t walk up there. That snows at least a foot deep if something or somebody is still here you’ll never be able to run for it. We’ll hop in the back of Jen’s truck.”

Within a minute we had armed ourselves and got into the back of the truck. My concern lied in the fact of how was I going to pick up Tracy’s pieces of broken soul when she discovered her mother was gone. Oh and gone I hoped she was. If we found her eaten body or worse yet her as zombie, I didn’t know how the Talbots would be able to muster on. The cold reddened Tracy’s features but even that couldn’t compare to the red in her eyes. Tommy was busy wetting his fingertips and smoothing back an invisible cowlick, as if trying to make himself presentable. Well of all the signs he could be portraying that was one of the better ones. As we jostled our way up the yard, I wasn’t convinced we were still on the driveway as the splashes of blood became more pronounced. But it wasn’t just blood, I noticed a boot sticking up in one of the piles. In another was an outstretched hand. It sort of reminded me of a sapling struggling for light. I would have shot it if I really thought it was going to take root.

One thing I could tell was, there hadn’t really been a battle here. Some of the bodies had been out for a lot longer than the others. There was one that aside from a tuft of hair sticking up, I would have never known was there. The blood had been completely covered with subsequent snowfall. A few were fresh, and that could only mean one thing, there was something here worth trying to eat.

My sight was brought to the fore by movement. Someone had arisen out of a chair and was standing on the porch and even from this distance I could tell that they had one mean mother of a breech-loading shotgun at the ready.

Tracy shocked me as she yelled out. “Mom!?”

I wanted to say something about her giving us away but the roar of the truck engine as it struggled to cut through the snow could probably be heard for miles in this new, quiet world. Come to think of it, I was never ever going to miss the sound of a jackhammer at 7:33 in the morning on a Saturday. The shape of the person on the porch had the consistency of someone’s grandmother but the majority of my focus was on that ten-gauge shotgun. We were close enough that if that person started to shoot slugs we’d be able to count ourselves among the other lawn ornaments.

I banged on the roof of the truck for Jen to stop.

She looked out her window. “What’s up Mike?”

“Stop the truck and kill the engine.” I told her.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” She asked.

“Nope.” I answered truthfully, the truck engine simmered to a stop. The pinging of the heated motor the only sound to break up the muffled day.

“Mom?!” Tracy yelled out again.

Nothing, no response. Only the steady unwavering double barrel of a large caliber shotgun. After a few seconds the barrel dipped imperceptibly.

“Tracy?!” Came the tremulous reply.

That was it. Tracy was down off the bed of the truck and running at full tilt. Which really wasn’t all that fast when you’re knee deep in snow. I banged on the roof of the truck again.

“Wagon’s forward!” I yelled and gestured. Don’t ask me why, seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Tracy was PISSED OFF when we passed her on by, and even more so when Jen had nearly blocked off the entire porch entrance. As she caught up to us, her passing glance was so cold it burned my face.

“Mike?” Carol asked.

“Hey mom.” I said as I jumped down off the bed of the truck.

Tracy had rushed full tilt into her mother’s arms, there was some crying and sobbing and some general tear jerking and I think that Carol and Tracy might have also blubbered, wasn’t sure, couldn’t see through the haze of salty water. Must have sat on my keys again.

I joined in the small huddle, God she smelled like chocolate chip cookies, how do Grandmother’s do that? “We brought you something.” I told her. “It’s Jeff Daniels.” I said needlessly, the shape of the paper bag gave away the contents. Kind of like trying to gift wrap a bike, why bother.

“Jack Daniels?” Carol asked.

Tommy had come down off the truck and was watching the reunion. “That’s what he said.” With a tone that implied we all must have gone over the edge.

Carol gasped as she looked at Tommy. “You’re the one from my dreams.”

Tommy looked perplexed. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about Gran Y.” He said.

“Sure you do. You’re the one that likes those little flavored shingles in the foil packs.”

Tommy looked aghast. “Pop-tarts aren’t shingles Gran Y.”

I thought I was going to have to catch Carol from falling when she saw all three kids.

“Oh my God! I prayed for this day! I never thought that you would all make it.” She was openly crying. Yeah I was too, so sue me. “Come here! Come here!” she motioned to them all. Our group huddle was ungainly, but it felt so right.

“Oh my God, mom, we never thought...” Tracy hitched.

“Me?” Carol laughed. I’m too tough an old bird for them. Not sure if they even got by Big Bertha here.” She said shaking her shotgun. “That they’d even want me.” She laughed again. “I’ve spent damn near my entire life on this farm. I’m as tough as the soil daddy used to try and cull crops from.” She laughed again.

I couldn’t help myself. I hugged her again. I was having a heavy estrogen flow day.

“You smell just like cookies.” I told her out loud.

“That’s because I’m making some. Don’t look so surprised, Tommy told me you were coming. Of course, I didn’t believe him at first. I thought it might be the onset of advanced Alzheimer’s or maybe schizophrenia or maybe even just plain old loneliness but I figured what the hell, might as well be ready. Oh and by the way Tommy.” She said stopping to look at him.

Had we told her his name? I didn’t think so.

Carol continued. “I didn’t have any gummy bears to put in with the chocolate chips.”

Tommy handed her a bag of gummy bears from his pocket. Was it coincidence? Now Tommy is usually a walking pantry to begin with but he didn’t even hesitate when he reached into one of his many hidden storage compartments.

Carol took the bag as if she had been expecting this. “Great I’ll put them in with the next batch.”

“You have power Carol?” I asked her.

“Gotta be pretty self sufficient when you live this far in the outskirts. See any power lines, city boy. The generator is in the barn.”

I waited until she went back into the house before I did a complete 360 scan of the area. No poles. I did a little happy dance as I realized I was going to take a hot shower tonight.

“What’s the matter Talbot?” BT asked as Jen and Travis helped him up the steps. “Gotta pee.”

Except for being a few shades paler than he oughta be. The big man looked pretty good. This was turning out to be a pretty good fucking day and I was about to eat some chocolate chip cookies!

Tommy was already through the door. I could hear mock slapping as Carol was trying to shoo him away from her cookie sheet.

“Wait until I at least get them off the tray, you’ll burn yourself.” Carol shouted at him. Tommy hovered over her like a News helicopter at a crash scene.

Seeing her grandmother had reignited a spark within Nicole’s eyes. The sadness was still there but it had been layered over a little, with love. And that was how people survived. They moved on. The bleeding, gaping wound, slowly became infused with coagulants and then the bleeding would trickle to a stop. The flesh would scab over and slowly begin to knot itself together and eventually the scab would fall off leaving fresh shiny puckered skin. That would in time eventually fade to a scar. It would be something you would be able to remember the pain of your entire life and you would always have the reminder. But it no longer consumed the resources of the body anymore to heal it.

The smiles around the kitchen table, as we devoured first that sheet and then another sheet of cookies with the surprisingly good taste of gummy bears mixed in, renewed my faith. My faith in what? God, humanity, survival, just plain old cookies, I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t going to question it. If I didn’t have another ultimate destination in mind I could have seen myself spending the rest of my days in this loving household. And then it struck me, why should I drag my family still another 1500 hundred miles across the country. And for what? There was no guarantee that any of my family survived. Carol survived though and if she could do it, then so could they. But she’s in rural North Dakota, not much happened here when everybody was alive. Yeah and my family is in rural Maine. If I could Google it, I’d bet the populations were similar.

Not knowing what had happened to my family weighed heavily but the thought of exposing my immediate family into even more danger to satisfy my curiosity was not an option.

I grabbed Tracy’s hand and took her in to the living room.

“I think we should just stay here Trace.”

Her look questioned me, but I could see the excitement beyond “Are you sure Mike. I know how much you want to get back home.”

“I think maybe we are home.”

She hugged me fiercely, her leg crushing into my pilfered bottle of Viagra stashed in my pants pocket.

“You happy to see me Mike?” She asked with a smile.

“I sure as hell could be.” I answered her. She smacked me. We headed back into the kitchen. Her first and then me after some slight man parts adjusting. At least the momentary estrogen flood hadn’t completely emasculated me.

After a bunch more laughing and eating I went out to the porch. I would like to say that I had to loosen my belt because of the meal. These last few weeks stripped any fat reserves I had stored. I looked down the yard at the minivan wondering how many trips was it going to take to get everything up here. I also wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of leaving it down there either. It looked too much like an invitation.

I heard a burst of merriment as Carol opened up the door to join me on the porch.

“I can’t tell you what a wonderful thing you’ve done here Mike.” She said.

“We had to come and see if you were alright mom.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and I think you know it.” I wanted to protest, it might have rang hollow though. “I mean bringing my daughter and my grandkids to me, alive and safe.” I started to speak. “Hush, I know what you’re going to say. But most people didn’t feel like it was what they had to do Mike. A good number of folks turned their guns on their kin rather than stand and fight.” I looked at her in bewilderment. “No Mike you didn’t HAVE to do anything but you did. You know when Tracy first married you, I wondered what the hell she saw in you.”

“Don’t hold back on my account.”

“Oh I won’t. To be fair, you’re a looker but I wasn’t sure of your character.”

“Holy shit Carol is this a pep talk?”

“Hush I’m not done talking yet.”

“Can you at least bust open that bottle of Jeff?” I asked her

From somewhere deep inside the house I heard Tommy yell ‘Jack’.

“You always seemed nuttier than a pecan pie to me.”

“Oh this is just getting better and better.” I took a long pull from the Daniels that she handed me.

“But when Nicole was born and I saw how you were with her. I thought I might have made a mistake about you.”

“Great.” I took another swig.

“Now stop! That’s not an easy thing for me to admit. You know Tracy is my only child and I damn near lost her at childbirth. So I only wanted what was best for her and at the time I didn’t think that was you. But I watched you with Nicole. She stripped away your East coast sarcasm and your ill temper towards the world. You loved her like no other ever could. The father’s pride that beamed in your eyes every time you held her, that alone made me realize my error. I’ve seen you with all your kids Mike and I know that you would do whatever it took to make sure that each and every one of them was safe. And for that Mike I’m sorry that I ever doubted you. But if you take one more swig off my bottle like the last one, I’m taking it all back.”

I handed her the bottle back, I had actually taken a fair hit against the contents. I felt a little bad but it was rapidly becoming covered over with the warm tingly feeling of a buzz.

“What are you two doing out here?” Tracy asked, donning her coat.

“Reminiscing.” I told her.

“Reminiscing huh? How much of that paint thinner have you had Mike?” My wife asked me.

“More than he should have.” Carol said, holding the bottle up.

“We gots to get that minivan off the road.”

“Gots huh? I don’t think you should be driving anything, Mike.” Tracy said.

“Aw it’s not like he’s going to get a DUI. Loosen up girl.” My mother-in-law said between swigs.

“Mom! Don’t encourage him.”

“You still got that tractor Carol?”

“Actually had it running about a month or so ago to plow the driveway. Don’t really have a desire much now to go out. “Though if you hadn’t brought this whiskey I might’ve been changing my mind soon.”

CHAPTER 22

Now the question was, did I want to plow the driveway and let any old schmoe have a direct route up or did I want to drag the minivan and all its contents up here. If I dragged it up here and something happened where we needed to get out again we were screwed. Plow the driveway it was then. If anybody came a knockin we’d deal with it at that point. Not like this was I-95 to begin with. I went back into the house and put on everything and anything that I thought would stave off the frigid cold. Whisky glow was only going to get me so far. And yes I know that alcohol doesn’t really warm you up. It does the opposite in fact by thinning your blood. It just makes you FEEL warmer. I had bundled up near to the point of becoming a beach ball with appendages and was three steps down the porch before I realized I had forgotten something. Now I know this was the safest I’ve felt in weeks but still I marched back in pretending to ignore my wife’s questioning gaze and grabbed my nine-millimeter.

The barn, where the tractor was located, was about 100 yards or so from the house. I encountered six death blotches between the house and the barn. I shook my head in marvelment of how Carol had survived. Had she slept? It wasn’t like she could post a guard. She didn’t have a dog anymore. Bastion had died I think two summers ago, struck by the tractor. Tracy had cried for near on a week. Her father had got that coon hound the day he found out he had cancer. He often told people that on his worst days of getting chemo, it was the tail wagging, tongue-licking Bastion that helped him get through the day. Even on his deathbed he had told Carol that the dog had probably given them an extra half of year together. Carol loved that dog, if only for the fact that it had given her and her beloved husband extra time.

It was two years after Everett’s death that she had hired a handyman to get rid of some trash from the back acreage. Something Everett had been promising for close on 15 years. It was more of an inside joke that Everett had never gotten around to it than a point of contention. When the man had come running up to the household with a broken bloody bundle in his arms, Carol had intrinsically known what he carried. She had wept nearly as many tears for the mangy Bastion as she had for her husband. Another link to him was gone. She buried Bastion alongside her husband in the family cemetery.

So I circled back to the original question. How could she ever sleep knowing that at that very minute, a mindless, hungry predator might be closing in. I shuddered. I had reached the front door to the barn, now not nearly as prepared to enter into the gloomy interior.

“They don’t lay in wait Talbot.” I said out loud. It was a trick nearly everyone uses to steel their resolve. I think it’s more to let whatever monster is lurking know that we’re coming in ready or not. I just wish the monster gave the same courtesy. I clicked over the ancient light switch. Two light bulbs lazily lit the room. you could still wear night vision goggles in here and not get any glare through them. The tractor stood dead center in the barn and every deadly implement known to farming kind graced the walls all around me. I was sweating. I felt that it was dignity saving to blame it on the multiple layering I was swathed in.

I had reached the tractor when Justin shouted to me from the door. I realized then my mistake. Not that I was going to shoot Justin or even that he startled me enough to do it accidentally but if someone of ill intent had come up on me, my multi layered fingers couldn’t fit in through the trigger guard. “You are just all sorts of a hot mess, aren’t you Talbot.” I again said out loud to myself.

“I asked if you needed any help Dad.” Justin answered thinking I hadn’t heard his first query, which I hadn’t. I had been whistling demons away at that time.

He looked like shit and five degrees below zero was going to do little to help him. “Sure.” I didn’t know what the cause of his recent detachment to us was but if he was going to throw a lifeline it was my duty to reel him in. “Gotta a gun?”

“What do you think? I’m your son.”

“Smart ass. Okay let’s just do a quick search through the stalls and the loft. This place gives me the willies.”

“You sure it’s not me?” He asked, half of the question was smart ass reply half though was a true question.

I didn’t have a fifty fifty answer. I let it drop. Within minutes we discovered that the only other tenants of the barn were an extended family of field mice. I decided that if they were going to leave us alone then I would follow suit. Yep you guessed it. Mice scare the crap out of me. Yes I’ve been to battle. I’ve killed my fellow man and monsters of myth. It’s just something about that hairless tail that really shoots a spike of fear through me. I don’t really want to talk about it. Just add it onto the growing list of Talbotisms.

The tractor cranked after the third time and a good blast of starting fluid into the carburetor. “You up for doing some plowing?” I asked Justin.

He looked at me like I was pulling his leg. “You serious?”

“Sure go ahead.” I told him. For those of you that thought I did this only because I didn’t want to be out in the North Dakota winter only have it partially correct. Isn’t this part of the reason we have kids at all? So they can do the shit jobs that we used to do. Like taking out the trash, mowing the lawn, shoveling walkways. You don’t really wonder why farm families used to be so huge do you? It’s not because screwing is the only thing to do. It’s because there is so much work to be done. Okay and screwing was really the only form of entertainment.

I stepped back before Justin had the chance to lurch the tractor into gear. The kid really couldn’t so much as drive a nail, if you catch my meaning. He definitely inherited that from his mother. I figured the tractor to be about 8 feet wide and the doors to the barn easily double that width and still I wondered if he would hit the frame. Would that kind of strike be enough to take the ancient structure down? And would we survive being buried by 87 tons of sharpened metal objects? Probably not, I walked out to guide him through. Not bad, I thought, as he had a good six inches of clearance on his left hand side.

“Alright.” I shouted. “Just make a pathway down to the minivan so we can get it back up here.” Justin gave me a thumbs up.

I turned to walk back to the house and hopefully a steaming mug of cocoa. I was lost in the reverie of melted marshmallows when the warning shout came.

“Look out!” Came the distant shout from the house. I looked up towards the porch. Tracy was cupping her hands together for the bullhorn effect. When she realized she had caught my attention she made an over agitated gesture with her arm. I dove to my left, the blade of the plow pushed air past my face, Justin was looking off to his right and had not even noticed that he had almost made me a snow angel. So angel might be a little liberal but it’s more of an analogy. He turned back towards me as he passed. Something between ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘Damn’ crossed his face. I stood up and brushed the snow off of me, just staring at him as he passed.

I looked back up at the porch Tommy had an expression on his face I couldn’t remember ever seeing. It was rage. The glare he directed at Justin got to me more than the mice. All of a sudden Carol’s house didn’t seem quite as accommodating. We were going to bring our problems with us no matter where we went. I had momentarily let myself get swayed into a false sense of security. I wouldn’t let that happen again. Eliza was still out there and apparently we were of great interest to her. Maybe not me as much, however, we were on her short list for people she wanted dead.

The cocoa was good but I was too distracted to thoroughly enjoy it. Instead of going in and staying in, I sat out on the porch and watched Justin actually do an admirable job of clearing a pathway. He only stopped once as the plow bit into the frozen corpse of a zombie, spreading frozen chunks of meat along a twenty-foot swath of driveway. He hopped down off the tractor, showed the right amount of disgust as he untangled the ensnared carcass. Or was it pity?

I froze twice as much on that porch as I would have if I had stayed on the tractor. I waited until Justin pulled the tractor back into the barn. This time he actually did take off a chunk of door frame. I shuddered thinking that could have been my skull. I heard the engine rattle to an end and then I began my long ascent out of the deck chair. Convinced at this point that the fluid around my knees had completely frozen. My injured knee popped like a firecracker when I got it to full extension. Numbness from the cold kept the pain down to a dull roar. When this thing de-thawed I was going to be whimpering like a kid at Toys ‘R’ Us that didn’t get the Deluxe Batman figurine with a fully stocked utility belt.

“That sounds like it hurt.”

I had been too wrapped up in my own misery to hear Tracy come out.

“Not as much as it’s going to tonight.”

“You going down to get the van?”

It was obvious what I was doing. She was fishing for something. I knew the game. I just rarely if ever won.

“Yeah, figured I’d better get it now before either it or me freezes.”

“You want me to go with you?”

I turned to look at her. “What’s up Hon?”

“What? I can’t walk with my husband.”

“Hold on. That’s not what I said. We both know you like the cold weather about as much as I like ham.” (Did I not tell you about that yet? I’ll get to it eventually.) “And yes I appreciate the company but it’s got to be closing in on negative ten out here and I think a wonderful cooling northerly breeze has begun to kick up. So what gives?”

“Fine let’s walk.”

We were halfway down the driveway before she spoke. But I noticed her turn towards the barn before she said anything.

“What’s going on Mike?” I didn’t need any clarification. If I had, just her previous look to the barn would have erased all doubt of what subject we were broaching. “Mike, Justin was looking right at you as he drove that plow.”

“Figured as much.” I said.

“He tried to kill you Mike.” Tracy said with force and conviction.

“I would imagine.”

She grabbed my arm and forcibly spun me towards her. “How can you be so caviler about this? I saw his face Mike. He was smiling! Fucking smiling!”

How I could feel any colder was beyond me but I did. I was freezing from my core outwards. I looked back towards the barn and the source of my unnatural icebox sensation. Justin stood between the great doors looking at us both. He waved with all the enthusiasm of a dead cheerleader. Tracy saw what I was looking at and wrapped both her arms around herself in a useless tactic to hold in body heat, or keep evil out.

“It’s got something to do with that scratch he got when he went to get Paul. He got infected with something but that’s not quite right. It’s more like he got possessed.”

Tracy gasped at that word. When she was 12 she had slept over her best friend Dawn’s house. Dawn’s father had the brilliant idea to bring his daughter and Tracy to the drive-in featuring arguably one of the scariest movies of all time, the Exorcist. Since that point forward, Tracy had always had a higher than ordinary fear of the devil and his minions. Hey all of our psychoses need to start somewhere.

“But not completely.” I added hastily. It did little to moderate her fear. “Justin’s still in there and he knows something is wrong. There are times like earlier today where I felt that his old persona was closer to the surface. Now I don’t know if that was an act on his part or not but I’ve got to think that when he lets his concentration lapse or when he’s focused on something else that whatever is inside of him can gain some measure of control.”

Tracy shuddered again.

“Come on let’s get down to the van. We stand out here too much longer and we’re going to look like we ran into Medusa.” She didn’t argue.

“Do you think the antibiotics are helping?” She asked as a frozen tear descended down her cheek.

“I think it keeps the infection in check. I’m not sure the meds alone can cure it though. Without them though, whatever it is would be able to gain a bigger if not complete foothold.”

“Mike what are we going to do?”

We had reached the van. I fumbled with the keys, partly to stall an answer but mostly because I couldn’t feel my fingers. I struggled with my door, seems it had frozen in place, couldn’t really blame it, although I looked like a dork as Tracy’s opened up with a minimal effort from her. The inside of the car was little better than a meat locker. If the car didn’t start, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to make it back up into the house before we solidified.

Heat and humidity suck as far as I’m concerned. I’ve voiced that opinion, over and over throughout my life. My argument was that you could only get so naked to get cooler whereas you could always put more clothes on in the winter to get warmer. But this was different, I was physically distressed at how cold I had become. My thought pattern felt addled as I nearly snapped the key in half trying to turn it the wrong way in the ignition. Tracy didn’t look much better off than me.

“Did you say they have Philly Cheesesteak’s in Chicago?” She asked.

I had no clue what the hell she was talking about but it distracted me enough before I sheared the key off. The engine did the slow ‘whirring’ sound of a car that has no desire to start and wants to make it abundantly clear on its stance. I held the key in place many long seconds after I should have let it go. Whirrr...whirr...whir...vroom. Glacial air spewed from the heater vents as the engine caught. My breath cascaded down into my lap in frozen droplets of water. The slap of wintry infused air slapped across Tracy’s face and she broke out of her fog.

“Holy shit, that’s cold!” She said as she placed her hands over the vent.

“If only I could invent an air conditioner to work that well.”

She didn’t see the humor as I reached to shut the ‘heater’ off. After some careful thrusts on the gas pedal to flood the engine with some fuel, I placed the car in gear. Somewhat certain it wouldn’t stall. We both held our breaths as the transmission engaged drawing some life from the engine and nearly extinguishing it. I held one foot on the brake and one halfway down on the gas as I flooded high explosive fluid through the valves. A minute or two later we were up by the house. Tracy got out before we stopped moving, heading straight for the house.

“Don’t sweat it hon.” I said to her retreating back. “I’ll get the stuff out of here.” I didn’t even get the customary wave over her back for that. I shut the car off, grabbed what was immediately close to me and rushed to follow. My damaged knee made forward progress an aggressively slow endeavor. There was an infinitesimally long delay as I got to the door and there was a flood of people heading out to grab stuff out of the van. Courtesy dictated that I move to the side and let them out so they could help. I pushed myself through the throng, courtesy be damned. I was a heartbeat and a half from frostbite and I liked all my digits exactly where they were.

Tracy hovered dangerously close to the roaring fire. I almost pushed her in as I jockeyed for position to gain some heat. Degree by degree we came back to our own. The tingling pain of blood flowing back to extremities was an actual welcome sensation. It meant life, life in all its glorious triumphs and disasters. I kissed Tracy long and hard there, welcome in the fact that we still endured and doubly thankful that one appendage still had the grace to feel the press of blood.

“Get a room.” Jen said as she sat down in one of the lounge chairs next to a bookshelf.

We broke our kiss, warmth radiated down from my lips. Tracy even looked a little flushed. I was going to try that Viagra out tonight, guaranteed! I shouted ‘Yes’ in my head, with the fist pump and all.

“We got all the stuff in. Some of the food is frozen solid though.” Jen finished.

To reiterate her point, Tommy came into the room with a Twinkie clamped in a pair of salad tongs. He pushed me over a little to the side so that his Twinkie could get some heat.

“Am I in your way Tommy?” I said with good-humored sarcasm.

“A little bit Mr. T, could you move a skosh?”

I laughed. “Yeah I figured it was time to get some of these clothes off anyway.”

“Great!” Tommy said, never taking his eyes off his cold prize. “You were kind of in the way.”

I stood up and like I expected, my knee let it be known about its condition. I wondered how a Percocet would interact with a Viagra. I couldn’t see the sense of having a hard on I could slam in a door. I involuntarily crossed my legs at the errant thought.

“You alright Mike?” Tracy asked.

“Yeah just my knee.” Although it was obvious from my gesture that wasn’t the cause.

“Maybe you should get that checked out.”

Again obviously she was talking about my knee but when I answered I was thinking completely about something a little closer to my belt line. “Yeah you’re right, I’d definitely like to get that checked out.” My lascivious leer almost gave me away as Tracy looked questioningly at me.

I shuffled out of the room like someone double my age and half hopped, half pulled myself up the stairs to the old room Tracy and I used whenever we came to visit. Which hadn’t actually been in a few years now that I thought about it. Not since Everett had died to be specific. Sure Tracy and Carol talked almost daily but that’s not the same as basic human contact. Again I marveled at how she had survived so well in such an inhospitable place all by herself. In point of fact, it was most likely the reason she had survived was because she was in such a place.

I finally made it to my room, thankful that someone had the presence of mind to bring some of my stuff up here. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot but I had grabbed a crap load of knee braces and ace bandages when we were in the Rite-Aid and I was going to make good use of them now. I was going to have to peel my layers of clothing off like an onion sheds skin before I could do so. My knee was a sorry sight when I finally got down to it. It was black and blue and nearly double the size of its brother. I gingerly wrapped it in two ace bandages. The elastic knee brace I had snagged would not stretch large enough to accommodate the swelling. I knew I needed to put ice on it but after my near death by popsicle-experience today I couldn’t even begin to imagine placing frozen water anywhere on my body.

I took two Tylenol and was immediately thinking about taking something stronger. The pain in my knee was beginning to rage. It was as if the heat from the fire had taken this long to thaw out the half gallon of fluid that surrounded my injured joint. If the pain in my knee was a grizzly bear, the Tylenol was like firing two air soft pellets at it. I dropped onto the bed with the bag of goodies from the pharmacy as pain lanced through my leg. I greedily downed first one and then another pain killer and...then another. I lay like that for at least ten minutes. The pain never truly went away, it just became muted. When I felt I could get up without crying too much, I used the head rail to prop myself up. I was greeted instantly and not so unpleasantly with the fogged over countenance of one under the influence of drugs, which thankfully I was. The pain in my knee was still sharp. On some level I realized that and still I didn’t care.

Unbeknownst to me I had somehow levitated down into the kitchen. Carol looked up from some delicious smelling stew she was preparing.

“Mike you been in my Jack again?”

I’m pretty sure I answered with the ever witty. “The what now?” More likely it came out as. “Duh?”

“You know you’re in your underpants right?” She said pointing her what appeared to be an oversized spoon at me.

“Tightie whities?” I asked hoping that wasn’t the case.

She cocked her head. “Just how much of my booze did you drink Mike?”

“Whitie tighties?” I mumbled, slivers of drool escaping from the corner of my mouth.

“Maybe you should just sit down.” She said as she pulled a chair out from the kitchen table.

I obeyed. Not that standing anymore was becoming much of an option. Drool landed on my blue boxer shorts. “Ah not frightie mighties!”

“Tracy!” Her mom yelled.

“Yeah Mom?” I heard the response from the living room.

“You might want to get in here.” Her mother answered turning back to the crock pot.

Tracy came in, looked quickly over to her mom and then to me, the source of the issue at hand. “Oh Talbot what are you doing?”

“I’m not wearing nightie bities.” I answered gallantly.

“That’s a good thing, I guess.” What the hell else could she say. “Come on let’s get you into the living room.”

“Not so sure I can get back up hon.” I think that came out nearly perfect, though my tongue felt as thick and dry as a plank.

“You don’t smell like booze. What’s the matter?”

I pointed to my knee, just since my short jaunt down into the kitchen my knee had grown nearly half again what I had started with. So much so that the ace bandage was nearly stretched to its capacity.

“Talbot!” Tracy said alarmed. “What the fuck?”

I don’t remember much about the walk out of the kitchen and onto the most comfortable couch I have ever had the pleasure of laying down on, except for a lot of finger pointing and laughing. Most of that coming from BT and he was more drugged up than I was.

CHAPTER 23

I didn’t have a clue how long I slept. When I finally awoke it wasn’t to the easy, peaceful, content feeling one arises to after a deep and satisfying sleep. There was no exaggerated stretch as I alit from the bed and casually scratched my nuts. Oh come on, that’s the first thing after the body unfolding, that every guy does when they get out of bed. Don’t ask me why, maybe it’s an evolutionary legacy, probably to wipe away prehistoric mites. Anyway back to the story, the distinctive sound of a gunshot prohibits one from the normal routine. I stood up as rapidly as my vertigo-addled brain would allow. Who knew we were in the midst of a 7.0 earthquake. I braced myself against the couch until the worst of the shakes had subsided. I took no small pleasure in the fact that the pain in my knee had subsided to something I could live with, if not entirely like.

I still pushed off with my right leg though. No sense in tempting the fates. BT stirred on his resting place but did not awaken. Had I imagined the whole thing? I heard nothing else. The only thing that gave me pause was that a single gunshot these days was rarer than a virgin Catholic schoolgirl. It was approaching dawn. I could tell by the murky light filtering through the windows but no one was up that I could tell. There was no sense of alarm, no commotion, no damn bacon cooking, ooh that sounded good. I had finally managed to gingerly walk my way up to the hallway that led to the front door, when a fully winter weather bundled Carol came in toting her shotgun.

She didn’t seem particularly startled to see me standing there. “You know you’re still in your underwear right?” She asked me.

Reflexively, I looked down slightly more embarrassed this time than the last.

She laughed. “Don’t worry about it, want some coffee?” She stooped over and placed her shotgun next to the door, in a holder that seemed perfectly tailored to that specific job. She looked up to see me watching her. “Did I wake you? She asked.

I had a sarcastic comment all lined up but then I thankfully remembered she was my mother-in-law and wisely thought better of unloosing my dumb-ass comment on the world.

“No, I was ready to get up anyway.”

“Hadn’t seen one in a couple of days was kind of hoping that was over.”

What she had seen, well let’s just say there isn’t much of a bear problem during the late winter season.

“Speaking of that, Carol. How did you know it was out there? I’d been meaning to ask, got a little side tracked last night.”

“Oh those first few days were tough. I was too scared to sleep. However, even fear will only go so far. More than once I woke up to one of those things at the door or the window. Damn near sent my ticker into overdrive. I can’t tell you how many times I just wanted to shoot through the door or the window. Good thing the practical side of me took over. I don’t have the materials to fix what I would have destroyed.”

“What the hell did you do?” I asked alarmed.

“I opened the window up and then killed them.” She said as naturally as if she had opened a window to let an apple pie cool on the windowsill.

“Fuhhh..” I started. Her watchful gaze made me pull back from my colorful phrasing. “I think I would have shot the glass out.”

“Have you felt how cold it is out there?”

I nodded, not only did I get her point but also felt it. “So then what?”

“You mean how did I sleep and still defend the homestead?”

I nodded again, completely enraptured, bacon momentarily forgotten as I followed her and her story into the kitchen.

“Well I rigged an alarm. I went out about a fifty or so feet from the house and set wooden stakes into the ground, every twenty feet or so in a circle around the house. Then I screwed an eye hook in each one, about waist high.” She said as she held her hand roughly at her belt line. “Then I threaded rope through all of them. Then finally I brought a rope all the way up to the house and attached it to a bell. Damn thing was worse than an alarm clock. Couldn’t hit snooze, if you get my meaning.”

My mouth must have been agape.

“You know Mike, I’ve been on a farm most of my life. Hard work is nothing new to me.”

“Sorry. That’s just genius.”

“Necessity. You want sugar in your coffee?”

“Please.” I said absently as I grabbed the mug from her. “Where is it now, I didn’t see it when we came in yesterday.”

“After Tommy’s message, I took down the part that led to the house and the barn. I didn’t want you to run it over mistakenly. Just because I can do hard work doesn’t mean I want to repeat it and a good portion of what is still up is under snow. Last night after our little talk in the kitchen... ”

I flushed with embarrassment. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. I saw your knee after Tracy unwrapped it. I wasn’t even sure how you were still standing. I did my best to drain it.”

“Oh, so that’s why it feels better. Thank you and you won’t mind if I don’t ask how you did it?”

She laughed again. “No I’ll get over it. So after you went to sleep,” She emphasized ‘sleep’ “I re-strung the alarm”. Didn’t expect to get company but I didn’t want to make any unexpected guests feel welcome.”

“Was there just the one then?” I asked her.

She looked hard at me. “You must have been sleeping pretty heavily. There were three. Travis and Jen took care of them all. They’re still out there making sure no more are coming. I wanted to get my old bones inside and by the fire. Now that I’ve got help I’m not too proud to use it.”

“Three?”

“And by the looks of them they look like they’ve traveled a ways.”

I bet they had! Fucking Eliza, I was going to slit her throat personally. I momentarily thought about heading outside, but garbed like I was, my manhood would shrivel to half its size and that I could not stomach or afford.

“I brought some clothes down for you, figured you’d want to go out as soon as you got up and the less stairs you climb right now the better.”

I nodded to her, my terse thoughts elsewhere.

“Mike you’re knee hurting again. You look mighty upset all of a sudden.”

“I just think we brought a whole lot of heartache down on you Carol, by coming here, I mean.”

She gently caressed my cheek. “You’ve done no such thing, you want bacon for breakfast?”

“There could be a sainthood in this for you Carol.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” She said as she turned back around.

I heard Jen and Travis come inside. It would have been hard not too, as loud as they were stomping the excess snow off their boots. I had just finished pulling on my third sweater and met them in the hallway. Jen’s color was nearly the shade of the material she was liberally shedding in the mudroom.

“Is that bacon?” Travis said happily as he headed into the kitchen.

I noticed that Jen waited patiently until Travis was out of earshot before she spoke.

“I won’t swear it Mike, the damage was just too great, but I’d bet money those people, I mean zombies.” She shook her head. “Were from Little Turtle.”

To think something bad is happening is bad enough, but to get conformation is downright shitty. “Are you sure?”

We both knew I was hoping for an alternate outcome.

“Like I said Mike, when you blow someone’s head off it’s a little difficult to get a positive i.d.”

“Well to be fair, you didn’t quite say it like that.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Yeah I know what you meant. I just want to choose not to believe it.”

“Are you going out to check?”

“No.”

She studied my less than poker face. “You knew they’d be coming?”

“Figured as much. I’d sort of hoped that maybe this was the place where we could finally stop and plant some roots. It feels so right here. Cold sure, but the energy seems so strong. I guess maybe I thought this might be some sort of hallowed ground. Crazy right?”

“No I don’t think so. We all want somewhere that we don’t constantly have to feel like it could be our last minute. I love this place too but it’s not the most easily defendable.”

“Wow, I think you may have been around me too long. My crazy is starting to rub off.”

“Not necessarily a bad thing Talbot, now let’s get some of that bacon. I’m starving.”

Tommy was already sitting at the table, strips of bacon hanging out of both his hands. His broad smile dappled with the fried goodness. “Morfning Mftr. T!”

There was one way in to the kitchen and I had been standing in the hallway that led in. I would have bet a mountain of Kit-Kats that the boy had not stepped into that hallway to get past me. “How’d you get here Tommy?”

“I walked.” He smiled again.

I was looking for more than the literal explanation. Tommy looked down at his hands, seemingly more concerned from which hand he was going to take his next bite from than answering me.

Travis and Carol were not going to be of any help. They were both at the stove. Carol was showing Travis how to make an omelet. Although I could tell from his posture he was more intent on eating said omelet than on learning how to make it. Maybe I would have pressed the issue, most likely not, but the rest of the family chose that time to come in. Tommy’s eyes twinkled at mine.

“You got them up. Didn’t you, you sly dog.” I conspiringly said to him.

“Bacon?” He said, pushing his meat-laden fists under my nose.

“Thanks I’ll get my own.” He seemed immensely relieved at that answer.

Breakfast was phenomenal. Farm fresh everything. I knew processed, and artificially preserved foods were a necessary evil of our society. Oh but what we had given up when we had moved off of our family farms and into the denizens of depravity, that would be cities, in non-sarcasm speak. Then it all came rushing back to me why we moved away, as I cleaned out the pens and fed the animals that had so graciously allowed us to gain sustenance from them. I enviously eyed the dairy cow. She had seemed completely at ease when I had first entered the animal enclosure but each subsequent time that I stopped to stare longingly at her, she more and more sensed the predatory nature of my visits.

Milk was grand, especially fresh milk. But a steak! Now that would be special.

“Hope you don’t have an accident Bessie.” I said as I patted her snout.

She pulled away, and eyed me warily.

“I’m just saying.” I told her.

Bessie wasn’t appeased much. She didn’t go back to chewing her cud until I was well past her stall.

It was close on lunch by the time I had finished my chores. It wasn’t steak but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the pork tenderloin chops Carol was dishing up.

“I would have made sandwiches, but I ran out of flour to make it with a few weeks ago.” She said apologetically.

“No.” Tracy told me, without a word coming out of my mouth.

“But.” I started.

“No Talbot, you’re not going anywhere.”

“Fine.” I pouted as I sat down to my mounded plate of meat. “Some barbecue sauce, maybe shredded a little. Man it would make a…”

“Talbot!” Tracy said.

“Fine.” I dug in. I didn’t think that after smelling animal ass for the last four hours I’d be hungry. I was wrong.

I parked my butt in the living room after lunch. The couch was inviting. The fire was warming. About the only thing that could have made this perfect was if ESPN were on. Carol had never had a television as far as I had known. Was that even possible? Wasn’t there a law against that or something? I shuddered at the thought. I think the only reason she ever got a phone was to stay in touch with her daughter.

BT was sitting up. “Why you looking all content and shit?” He asked me.

“I almost feel like I’ve come home.” I told him honestly.

“Almost?” He asked. He grimaced as he shifted his position so he could look at me easier. “It’s not over then?”

“What! Do I have a playbook on my face?”

“Let’s just say Talbot, you have an uncanny ability to say everything without opening your mouth.” Tracy said from the entryway. She came over and kissed my face. “And that’s what I love about you.”

“When we leaving then?” BT asked.

“I was hoping to give you more time to recover.” I was surprised when he nodded in agreement. He must be hurting if he couldn’t even manage a small semblance of male macho bravado.

“You tell me when Talbot. I’ll make myself ready.”

Justin came in at that point and sat down heavily in the large chair by the fire. “We have a week.”

Nobody doubted his source. I just doubted the message.

“We leave in three days BT.” I said never taking my eyes off of Justin.

Justin smiled maliciously, realizing I had just caught him in his lie and absolutely not caring.

“Two days.” I hastily amended. Justin’s and BT’s faces almost mirrored each other exactly in their disappointment.

Tracy’s shoulders sagged as the weight of my words weighed on her. “My mom won’t leave you know.”

“I know that. You’re going to have to convince her it’s for the best.”

“What’s for the best?” Carol asked.

“Is it me?” I asked Tracy. “Or is the timing of people showing up at the right time uncanny.”

“Canny.” Tommy filled in.

“So what’s for the best?” Carol asked again.

“That you come with us when we leave.” I said hastily, hoping that maybe the shock value of the words would be lost in their fast delivery, it wasn’t.

“I’ll do no such thing.” Carol answered adamantly.

“Mom.”

“Hush, Tracy. This is my home. I’m 79 years old and I have no desire to start somewhere else. I was born in this house. God willing I’ll die in it.”

“Mom?!” Tracy cried with more volume.

“And what’s more I don’t see the point in any of you leaving. There’s plenty of chickens and pigs to get us through the winter. Plus there’s Bessie.”

“Yeah for hamburger.” I added much too quickly.

“For milk.” Carol answered while she glared at me.

“Right, that’s what I meant.” Even though I hadn’t.

“Mom, the zombies are coming. We have to leave.” Tracy nearly begged.

“Then let them come.” Carol answered defiantly.

“Carol this isn’t going to be in ones and twos. There’s going to be hundreds.” I added.

Her countenance shifted subtly but she recovered quickly. “Then they come.” She answered again but with noticeably less vigor.

“At least think about it Carol. We’re leaving in two days.” That did shake her. I watched as all those years of hard farm work suddenly caught up with her. She gripped the couch arm much like I had earlier this morning. Tracy helped her to sit.

There was not much said the rest of that afternoon. Mostly idol talk about ‘remember whens’. The past had a much glossier shine now that the future was so tarnished. BT plunged himself into sleep. Most likely in a desperate bid to accelerate his bodies healing capabilities. Tommy stayed on the far end of the room from Justin but I would occasionally catch him staring raptly at him. If Justin knew or cared that he was sometimes Tommy’s center of attention he never let on. Tracy and Carol had left after a while to most likely discuss what they were going to do. I felt it was best not to intervene. Henry was laying by the fire, which coincidentally flared up every few minutes or so. Better that whatever noxious gases were spewing from him were consumed in the fire than disseminated out into the rest of the room.

Jen prowled around the house like a panther, constantly looking out the windows for party crashers. Travis had the air of many a military men I had been exposed to, he was able to pull off the duality of having heightened awareness will looking casually indifferent. I had envied those men and their façade of calm demeanor. Nicole had at some point come down from her room, eyes puffy from crying and into my arms. She had almost instantly fallen asleep, mourning can be an essence draining process. And me? Besides keeping a mental note of where and what everybody else was up to, I stared at the fire. The shifting shapes, patterns and colors helped to ease my troubled mind.

Jen was right. This was not an easily defendable location. Sure we could see the enemy coming for a quarter of a mile in nearly every direction. Then what? They would have a 360 degree angle of attack. We were vulnerable from all sides. The two largest egresses were the front door off the hallway and the back door in the kitchen. There were at least 12 windows on the lower level that were big enough for an intruder to gain entry. This was a nightmare. I knew without asking that there was no way Carol was going to let me shore up our meager defenses. I’d never be able to pull off cutting her staircase up. Tracy would kill me. The more I thought about it the more I concluded that our best defense was to not have one. We had to get gone.

I now regretted my decision to tell Justin about my amended plans. Whatever Eliza had originally planned she was surely making her own adjustments. I could only hope that she wasn’t in a position to move too quickly. I would have left that same evening if BT had been in a better place. I could leave him with Carol. That stray thought came out of left field and was quickly denounced otherwise I’d have Eliza and BT hunting us down.

I alternated constantly that day about the silence in the house. On one side it felt like the calm before the storm. On the other was the peace and harmony with the world that living on a farm can bring to ones soul, although I knew the falsity of that fantasy. I guess I was in a sort if self-induced trance as I watched that fire. So much so that my eyes began to itch from lack of blinking.

“Miss me?” I heard a male voice say, almost as if we were using cans and string and he was about a mile away. It was that indistinct.

I didn’t ‘speak’ these words but for ease of following the conversation I will make it appear that way.

“Who are you?” I asked. I tried my best to hide the tide of unease that was rising within me.

“Oh me and you go way back.” And the disembodied voice began to laugh.

I had finally cracked up. I mean I always knew this was an eventuality. Years of upbringing from a narcissistic mother, the intake of multiple drugs, including every hallucinogen known to man, Marine Corps boot camp and a subsequent tour of duty in Afghanistan, had left me vulnerable. Throw a zombie apocalypse on top of that and what do you have? Aberration Apple Pie. I had finally succumbed. I had slipped over the edge. The question now was how far was I going to fall? Was this to be a free fall into a bottomless pit or was it going to be a slow steady descent into insanity? If it was the slow descent, I could watch and take notes of each agonizingly hideous step down the path into Crazy Town. I was not strong enough to handle a duality within me. Hell Tracy could barely handle one of me, what was she going to think of this new development?

“You still there, shithead?” My other half asked.

Oh great, not only am I delusional but my other half is a rude prick. Wonderful.

“I’m talking to you!” It shouted. The voice was gaining clarity, as if the person on the other end was getting stronger or closer, or both.

“Dad!”

Oh no! It thinks I’m its father!

“Dad! You’re pulling my hair!”

And like that, the hold over me was gone. Now if I could just untangle the grip of Nicole’s hair I had in my fist, I’d be all set.

“Sorry honey, sorry.” I said as inadvertently pulled some of her hair out. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright Dad.” She said as she sat up and rubbed her head. “Were you dreaming?”

“God I hope so.” I said earnestly.

Tommy was looking over at me.

“Was I dreaming?” I asked him. He shrugged in return. Justin was no longer in the room. The fire flared a violent purple and then went back to its normal hues of orange and yellow. What the hell could Henry have aired out that would do that? Whatever it was, it must have been rancid. Even he couldn’t take it as he stood up and walked a few feet away from the offending zone and plopped back down contentedly.

BT managed to eat some dinner before he returned back into his self-induced coma. Jen could barely contain herself at the table, if I hadn’t known better I might have thought she had a serious case of crabs. She was more like an animal that could feel the change in the air, way before their ‘superior’ human masters could. A storm was brewing and not of the atmospheric kind either.

I was feeling loosely detached tonight, whether from my earlier encounter with my bad half or I was picking up on whatever wavelength Jen was. Carol, however, was whistling in merriment as she placed dish upon dish of good old country cooking on the table.

I was going to say something about last meals and all but that seemed in very poor taste. Even if it was to be, what was the point in pointing it out? Tracy barely picked at her food. Apparently her mother had made it abundantly clear on what she was doing, and that involved not going with us. If we got out of here soon enough, that was the best decision she could have made. Being on the run is hard on the young and the hale, something even I wasn’t feeling much of these past few days as I absently rubbed my knee.

“I’m thinking of growing some jalapeno peppers this year.” Carol said as she dropped off a tray of what looked like mashed sweet potatoes. “I’ve never grown those before, they’ve got so much more flavor than the bell peppers I usually grow.”

“Mom, are you sure?” Tracy asked.

“Of course Tracy, I bought the seeds last year for just that purpose.”

“You know what I meant.”

Carol smiled and dropped off a plate stacked with sweet half ears of corn. I smiled too as I grabbed an ear and smeared two liberal pats of butter on it. Okay so Bessie had her pluses besides being a walking t-bone. Two days on a farm on a steady diet of meat and cream and I could already start to feel my body filling out. In three months I’d be one of those monstrosities they used to show on TruTv, 500 pounds and expanding.

“Carol sit down and eat.” I told her as I took another bite of wonderful fulfillment.

Henry had fallen asleep under the table waiting for something to find its way onto his domain, the floor. For some reason he had decided to use my feet as a headrest and his drool had soaked through my socks. When he finally picked his head up, I was relieved. When he barked I was concerned. No one moved except for Carol who laid another plate of what looked like cranberries on the table. It was difficult for me to tell though, all the cranberries I had ever bought were of the cylindrically shaped kind and usually had to be sliced with a knife. It went death quiet awfully quick. My glass of water, as it struck the top of the saltshaker, was the loudest thing in the room. Nothing or nobody else moved. Henry stood up, I could almost feel him bristling as he growled.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard him growl.” Jen said as she pushed her chair back stood up and took out her .45 Desert Eagle from her shoulder holster.

We all stood when the bell rang, but not the zombie alarm, the actual doorbell.

“Well I’ll be.” Carol said. “Who could that be?” She asked as she began to head out of the kitchen.

I quickly stood and got past her. “I’ll check.” I grabbed my AR, that was propped against the kitchen wall. Travis stood grabbed his shotgun and without any prompting from me stood watch over the back door. Jen was half an inch from me as I took the safety off my gun. I slowly approached the door figuring that at any moment it was about to crash violently inward followed by every unfathomable, unimaginable, inexplicable horror known to man and womankind. I wished I had thought to put my shoes on before I opened the door. Scrambling for my life in traction-less socks on a highly polished wooden floor was not an optimum way of meeting my maker.

I would have taken the extra thirty or so seconds to do just that but the doorbell ringing had progressed to violent door knocking. Alright, so much for the theory of a wayward Robin flying straight into the doorbell mechanism.

“Well hurry up now.” Carol called out from the kitchen. “Whoever’s out there is probably freezing to death.”

“That’s just fine with me.” I said softly.

Jen agreed.

BT about made me piss my pants as he appeared on my right side at the opening to the living room.

“Why you creeping around all stealth like?” BT asked. The door shuddered. “Oh.” BT hobbled back into the living room and grabbed his new gun of a choice, a semi automatic Browning 30.06 with a banana clip. I wouldn’t have even thought they made such a thing if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I couldn’t even begin to imagine repeatedly pulling the trigger on such a powerful weapon. In my present state of footwear the recoil would send me shooting across the floor ala Risky Business.

BT was all seriousness when he asked me. “What the hell are you smiling about.”

“You’re no Rebecca DeMornay.”

“Yeah and you don’t much look like Halle Berry.” He retorted. “If anything happens Talbot, you and Jen get the hell out of there, I’ll cover your retreat.”

“Dad!” Travis yelled. “I’ve got movement back here!”

“Shit.” I was stuck in indecision. The opaque glass on the front door rattled under the newest assault. I could barely make out a figure standing on the other side. Would Carol be pissed if I shot first and then opened the door? Jen’s Desert Eagle hung precariously over my shoulder, the breach inches from my ear. “Umm any chance you could move that away a little?”

“Sorry.”

The gun went from two inches away to four inches. Somehow I didn’t think that was going to make much difference except give the drum splitting noise a little more time to gain momentum as it slammed into my ear canal. Great, maybe the force of the explosion by my head would drive out the evil spirit that lurked within.

“Carol?” The muffled voice said from the other side of the doorway. “You in there?”

“Oh for goodness sake.” Carol said exasperatedly as she pushed past Jen’s and my wide-eyed expressions. “This isn’t very neighborly behavior, you two.” She berated us as she went by.

I reached out to stop her but could not gain enough traction to do so. Once the door was open the assault would begin and Carol would be directly in our line of fire. Valuable seconds would be lost getting her out of the way, neutralizing the threat, and getting the door secured again. The door opened. A purplish faced man stood their dancing around on his toes, his similarly toned companion, probably his wife, was huddled behind him.

CHAPTER 24

“Fred, Esther? What are you two doing out here? Come in, come in.” Carol motioned.

Fred took one look down the hallway at the arsenal confronting him.

“You sure?” He turned to Carol.

“Oh that’s my son in law and his friends.” She answered as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

“Carol?” I asked.

“It’s fine Mike. These are my neighbors from up the road, Fred and Esther Spretzen.” She answered me. “Where are the kids?” Carol asked with concern.

‘Jack and Jill’ as I was to later learn their names had gained entry through the back door. Travis had let them in at almost the same time as Carol had opened the front door. His explanation was that zombies didn’t seem much phased about the weather and the two kids were huddling together for warmth. As for the Jack and Jill thing, don’t ask me. Some parents have a weird sense of humor when it comes to naming their kids. Just ask the poor bastard whose name was Orangejello. He’ll tell you it’s no bargain being named after you mom’s favorite food. Well at least it wasn’t Meatloaf, although that had been done before too.

Carol ushered Fred and Esther into the living room and as close to the fire as was humanly possible before becoming a s’more. It was humorous watching Fred’s reaction as he tried to give BT as big a berth as was possible in that confined space. Odds were that Fred wasn’t much exposed to men of BT’s color much less that imposing of a size. Travis brought in the two kids, twins by the look and size of them. They couldn’t have been much more than 8 years old. I didn’t envy them the world they were about to inherit. Henry followed closely behind having learned that children of this age tend to drop more food than they eat.

The vacancy in their eyes was not lost on me as they sat by the fire, finally realizing that they were for the moment at least, safe. Fred was the first to break the silence.

“I…I went out to see what had the horses all in an uproar.” He choked on a sob as Esther rubbed his back. “They were kicking and whinnying something fierce. The last time they had been that upset a pack of coyotes had circled the barn and were digging around the frame looking for a way in.”

“No coyotes out in this weather though.” Carol finished for him.

He looked up at her with his red-rimmed eyes. “No, not coyotes. The barn door was broken open. I had my scattergun ready to shoot and when I got to the first stall it was full of them. They had dragged my plow horse down and were devouring him. He was still alive!” His voice rising. “The look of terror in his eyes is something I’ll never forget. He was frothing blood and kicking. I couldn’t do anything but stare at him.” He sobbed a bit. Esther kept up her calming ministrations on his back. “And then one of them must have noticed me cuz, it got up. I mean it got up fast. Faster than I’d seen any of them move. If it wasn’t for pieces of my horse Hank, hanging out of his mouth I might have thought he was human. Damn he still might have been, never thought to ask. But he killed my Hank so I figured I had every right to do the same to him. No matter how hungry he was.”

“It’s alright Fred.” Carol told him. “You did the right thing.”

He looked grateful. “I was gonna run for it but he was on me so fast I barely had enough time to pull the trigger. Caught him in the side, I watched as pieces of his mid-section blew against the wall. He didn’t even care. He kept coming. I must have lowered the gun a bit cause my next shot caught him square in the knee. I don’t think he cared much about that shot either but it brought him to the floor. His friends never even looked up. Hank had finally quit kicking. I was out of bullets and I had three more horses. Even if I got more ammo I’d never be able to load it fast enough to kill them all ‘fore they got to me. Now I love them horses like only a farmer can, but after God my family comes next.”

Esther placed her head on Fred’s shoulder.

“There was so many of them, I knew I’d never be able to keep them out of the house. So I loaded up the truck and was planning on heading down to my cousin’s in Bismarck.”

That was the first thing he’d said that I hadn’t agreed with. A city even of the relatively small size of Bismarck was the last place you wanted to be.

“We got eight miles from the house when I realized I had drained all the gas out to keep the generator running.”

Carol gasped. “You walked for five miles in this cold! Oh heavens!”

“Thirteen miles away and they’re your neighbors?” I asked incredulously.

“Exactly how many of them were there Fred?” Jen asked.

Fred was busy staring vacantly into the fire. Slow seconds passed before he answered. “Must of been seven or eight crammed in there.” He shuddered.

BT had at some point slumped back down onto his couch. He looked like he was fighting a losing battle with consciousness. Logistically the Spretzen’s had just fucked me. We had no room for four more people no matter how you sliced it. Even if I could somehow convince myself that MY family’s survival was more important than theirs, Tracy would never let me.

“Here we stand.” I said. “Or here we fall.”

Now that Carol’s options were reduced to one, she didn’t seem so enamored with it.

Jen knew immediately what was going on. “How much time you think we have to get ready?” She asked me.

“I’d say until tomorrow night.” I replied looking at Justin, he nodded sadly in confirmation.

“Any ideas?” She asked.

“One to start with.” I pointed my gun at Justin. “Give me your weapon.”

“Dad?” Nicole yelled.

“Talbot!” Tracy joined in.

“My heavens.” Came from Esther. Can’t remember the last time I heard that expletive.

“I can help Dad.” Justin said.

“I wish I could believe that son, I really do. But for now I don’t, give me the gun or I will shoot you.” I said it without malice or menace but no truer intent to my words had Justin ever encountered. Sure there were the thousand times I had told him while he was growing up that if he ever did THAT again he would get a whipping. Empty threats those had been, this was not one of them.

I could see the workings of his mind as he tried to play out how this encounter could go down. I wasn’t going to give him the chance to reason himself into an early grave.

“You’ll lose.” I told him matter of factly.

“Talbot, what are you doing? What are you talking about?” Tracy said approaching from the far side of the room.

I didn’t take the chance to look over at her. “Do not come any closer Tracy! If you try to get in the way I will drop him where he stands!”

“Now see here!” Fred said standing up.

“Listen Fred! I don’t know who the fuck you are and I really don’t give a shit. Your showing up here has already put my family in jeopardy. Because I have these stupid fucking qualities called morality and honor. These WORDS are more than likely going to get everything I care about in this shitty little world destroyed. NOW SIT YOUR ASS DOWN before you give me a reason to get rid of you and all the troubles you entail!”

Fred complied. Tracy was inching closer but still not a threat to thwart me yet. Justin’s eyes shifted rapidly from my eyes, to the barrel of the AR, to my trigger finger, which was beginning to whiten at the knuckle. I think Justin was getting messages of ‘Go for it.’ He was sweating at the brow and his eye movements were becoming more frenetic.

“Justin stop.” I said calmly. “You’ll lose.”

“But so will you Michael Talbot.” The sound came from Justin but the words did not. “How long can you live with the guilt of killing your son?” He croaked out a harsh laugh. “What will your honor and morality do to you?” He/she laughed again.

“Dad, help me!” Justin cried, as he struggled to keep his wayward hand from gripping the pistol out of its holster.

“Give me Tommy.” Justin’s voice said. “And I will give you this back.” Justin said as he beat his fist against his chest. “At least for a while.” That grating laugh erupted again.

“Give you Tommy huh? And then what? Will you leave us alone? Can we get some paperwork signed to that effect. I’ve never been big on verbal agreements.”

Justin’s smile faded. “How funny will you be when your de...”

Justin folded in on himself under the assault of BT’s ham sized fist. “God I was sick of listening to her drawl on.” He fell back on the couch and was almost instantly asleep.

Tracy rushed over to Justin’s side. I went over and grabbed his gun. Tracy looked up at me. Hurt and anger were running through her but she didn’t know where to direct it. What I had done was not palatable but it was a necessary evil.

“Jen, Trav, tie him up and put him in the basement.”

Tracy stood up. It looked like Vesuvius was about to erupt all over again. But she had witnessed what we all had witnessed. Justin was a known threat that could not be swept under the rug any more.

“I just want him out of the way while we set up some sort of defense Tracy.” She nodded in agreement. “He’s a direct pipeline to the enemy. What he sees they see.”

“He’s my baby.” She sobbed.

Jen and Travis looked to me for direction. I nodded. “Bring him down some blankets. One more thing.” Jen stopped. “I want him blindfolded.”

“Why Mike?” Tracy asked, but the fight was out of her.

“The less he knows Mom, the less she knows.” Travis filled in for me. Tracy walked away face in hands.

“Carol we need to talk.” I waited until Justin was secured in the basement and Jen and Travis returned. I had the beginnings of a plan and it was pretty much a do or die scenario. Getting Carol on board was surprisingly easier than I had expected. We all talked there for a few hours going over the finer points and how we would deal with what could go wrong as opposed to what needed to go right. The list of ‘wrong’ was growing at a near geometric rate.

“This is suicide Mike.” Jen said after we had gone over the plan for the twenty-third time.

“Not really, I give it a solid 5 or 6 percent chance of success.” I smiled.

“Bullshit.” BT threw in. “It’s 3 or 4 at best.”

Carol, Fred and Esther’s faces drained of all color at our macabre humor.

“There’s a major flaw in your plan, Mike.” Jen said.

I laughed, what else could I do. “Only one?”

“You know what I mean, ass.” She finished.

“It is a big one I’ll admit that, not much I can do about it though.”

Jen sighed in agreement.

Once we had finished formulating our idea, I hate to say plan, that implies that you think it might actually work. idea gives it more of an abstract feel.

Tracy started to speak. “I...” I cut her off.

“Abso-fucking-lutely not.” She, as expected, started to protest. “This is not open for discussion.” I didn’t raise my voice but the force I laid on those words would have given pause to most Marines. Tracy plowed on.

“Mike.” She began again.

“No.” I said as I held up my hand. “Listen for the twenty three years we’ve been married I’ve known all along that I’m more of a figurehead, I know it and the kids know it. Shit, Henry knows it.”

“Yeah he does.” Tommy said.

“Thank you.” I said to Tommy.

“No problem.” He smiled.

“There have only been a handful of times in our long marriage where I have finally exerted an authority that is only implied.” Tracy nodded in agreement. “And this is going to be another one of them. We do this my way, Tracy. There are no other options.”

“Mike.” She said solemnly. “What makes you think that I could ever let you stand alone? All of our married lives we have met every challenge together. No matter the menace. I could no sooner leave you than I could the kids.”

“But don’t you get it?” I told her as I cupped her face. “You stand with me, you are walking away from the kids.” She pulled away.

“You can’t make me choose.” She cried.

“I’m not letting you choose Tracy. The decision has been made. Besides you heard BT, there’s a good 4 or 5 percent chance this’ll work.”

“I said 3 or 4.” BT chimed in.

“Thanks big man.” I said sarcastically.

“Whatever I can do to help. Oh and by the way, I’m staying.”

“Fuck.” I turned from Tracy to him. “BT that’s not what we discussed.”

“You gonna tell me otherwise?” He asked threateningly.

“Fine BT, your funeral.”

“Mike you said this could work.” Tracy said with desperation in her voice.

“It was just a figure of speech, hon.”

“Poor choice of words dad.” Travis chimed in.

“What is wrong with the peanut gallery tonight?” I asked the heavens. (There was no answer...go figure)

“Dad an extra gun could be useful.” Travis said.

“NO!” Tracy and I yelled in unison, at least we agreed on this one thing.

CHAPTER 25

The next morning was industrious. Fred was becoming more of a stalwart ally than I would have been willing to give him credit for. His knowledge of how to shore up a house for an incoming storm was invaluable. This wasn’t your proto-typical storm so to speak but the theory was the same. We wanted to keep the outside elements from coming in. Travis, Jen and I prepared more than a few surprises. Nothing that would stop them, alas I didn’t have a nuke, this was more of a giving the finger gesture. It was right up my alley. Had I known what surprises Eliza had for me, I might not have been so inclined.

Tracy and Nicole made preparations for our hopefully hasty retreat once the time came. She questioned me once on the room in the cars. ‘If there’s no room now Mike, then how will there be when we leave.’ I just stared at her until she understood and walked away.

To be fair, if this worked, it could be all over for all of us, not just some of us. Carol walked around this house in a daze. Crying as she randomly picked up objects and set them carefully back down in the same location. She was mourning a loss she hadn’t suffered yet, but I wouldn’t begrudge her that.

Esther, Jack and Jill killed 6 chickens for lunch. We had fried chicken fit for a king.

“Reminds me of home.” BT said longingly as he rubbed his belly. He had only awakened long enough to consume two of the chickens all by himself.

After lunch Carol and I headed out to the barn that housed the animals.

“Oh Mike.” She buried her head in my shoulder.

“It’s for the best Carol. You heard Fred, apparently they’ve expanded their diets.”

I could feel the revulsion convulse through her.

We had earlier taken care of the chickens. I burped quietly, my belly content in the greasy soaking. I opened the pigpen. The giant five hundred pound sow named Charlotte looked expectantly at me like it was feeding time. Her just removed suckling saw daylight and went, I would imagine whee, whee, whee all the way home.

Charlotte was having none of it. She had spent her entire life in this 15 by 15 foot stall while the human caregivers had constantly brought her food and water. Her rudimentary mind had come to the conclusion that she must be some sort or revered being. Which in all actuality isn’t too far from the truth. Problem being though when her end came it wasn’t going to be on a burning Viking ship. More like a burning barbecue pit with some spice rub and a keg of cold beer. Maybe the Super Bowl on T.V.

“Mike?” Carol asked. “You alright?”

“Sorry thinking about something infinitely better.”

“Aren’t we all.” She responded.

I could only nod in agreement.

Bessie saw me coming, her eyes widened in fear. Couldn’t say I blamed her. How long would it take to field dress a t-bone out of her? The chicken grumbled in my belly.

“You’re lucky old girl.”

“Lucky?” Carol asked. “She’s most likely going to freeze to death.”

“Oh that.” I answered guiltily.

Carol opened the door to Bessie’s pen. Bessie looked around in confusion. Sure she was a cow but she had to know on some level that when animals left this barn they didn’t come back. Had her time finally come? She looked directly at me. I must have had one of those huge cartoon clouds over my head with a hamburger in it because she took off for the door.

“Good luck girl.” I said to Bessie’s retreating back. “I wish we could have spent more time together,” as I rubbed my belly.

“Mike, don’t make me take back all those good things I said about you.”

I put my arm around her shoulder, as her tears flowed freely.

“It’s really over isn’t it?” She asked as she sniffed her nose.

“Pretty much.” I had come to terms with my fate. I’m not saying I enjoyed it or was looking forward to it, but there was a breath of freedom in it all the same.

Carol and I walked up to the old house. The departing cold winter sun was slowly being replaced by an even colder full moon. It looked as large as a plate as it hung low on the horizon.

“At least we’ll be able to see them.” I said.

“And that’s good how?” Jen asked as Carol and I approached up the stairs.

I don’t think the zombies much cared about the psychological effect of attacking at night. This was going to be more of a timing issue for them. When they got here they would attack, pure, plain and simple. As soon as Jen had helped Carol get back into the house, I reattached the rope alarm. No sense in getting caught with our pants down. Then I thought of Cash, and all of a sudden my analogy didn’t seem quite so humorous. The sun setting in the west and the moon rising in the east were near equidistant to the horizon, when I implemented the most crucial element of the plan.

There was some resistance and much wailing and gnashing of the teeth but in the end I stood firm and got nearly all that I demanded. BT smiled at me as if he realized he was the only fly in my ointment. For an hour Jen and I idly pretended to play cards at the kitchen table. BT had long since retired to his couch. I wondered if he would stay awake long enough to see this through. The house was unnaturally quiet. However that was more me imprinting my feelings on my surroundings. What noises should the house be making? At this point I was even beginning to miss Henry’s world-class ass attack.

BT, much to my amazement, was first up when the alarm bell rang...once and only once.

“Any chance that could be Bessie coming home?” Jen asked.

“For her sake, I hope that isn’t the case, I’m starving.” I told her.

“Me too.” BT said.

“Men.” Jen said exasperatedly. “Is someone going to answer the call?” She asked.

“Women first.” BT said gallantly. “I would but I can’t walk so good.”

“I’ll get it.” I told her. The walk down the hallway was dream like. I felt like a condemned man finally going to make atonement for his transgressions. As fucked up as it sounds, I wanted to say ‘Dead Man Walking!’ But I thought my last words should be something more noble. Like ‘Tell my wife I love her.’ I kept my stray thoughts to myself, why now though? Why all of a sudden? I might have brought the thought to fruition, but the death bell rang one more grave time.

“Wow, someone’s hungry.” BT said.

“Ugh.” Was the loose translation from Jen.

“Not cool BT.” I said without ever turning back around. I might have ran and hid if I did. He laughed it off. I grabbed the handle to the door and took what I felt was going to be my last breathe. I turned the knob, opened the door and laid witness to what can only be described as an awake night terror. Hundreds maybe thousands of zombies surrounded the house, the front line of them within a hand span of the rope alarm. The only being holding the rope was someone I knew all too well.

“Hi roomie did you miss me?”

I was more pissed than anything that I had shown weakness but I could not stop it. The splash of vomit that issued forth from me was no more stoppable than the incessant tide.

Durgan laughed at me as I slammed the door back into place. Jen turned white as a ghost when she saw my face.

“Bad?” She asked.

“You could say that.” The words tasted funny through all the bile.

“What would you say?” BT asked, looking a lot more serious all of a sudden.

“Um, fucking horrible comes to mind. Maybe really fucking shitty, that’s another set of adjectives I’d use, there’s...”

“Enough Mike, what’s going on?” BT asked.

“Let’s just say that the zombie invasion has made this ground zero and they have a leader.”

“Eliza’s really here?” Jen gulped.

“Why didn’t you shoot her, this could already be over.” BT said.

“Sorry, too busy puking.” I said as I looked out the storm shutter. “And no it’s not Eliza, she sent one of her lackey’s, its Durgan and he seems pissed.”

“Oh I can’t imagine why.” Jen said. “First you run him off from his own store. Then you kill all his buddies while simultaneously shooting his leg off at the knee. You cave-in his one remaining good knee with a leg kick and to then top it off you leave him locked in a cell surrounded by zombies.”

“See! You know what I’m saying.” I said pointing to Jen. “He started every single one of those encounters. I just ended them. And here he is again, starting more shit. I guess it’s up to us to finish it.”

“No sense in messin’ with tradition.” BT stated matter-of-factly.

It started like a whispering wind over a graveyard and turned into a full blown crescendo as thousands of tortured vocal chords tried to chant, what I could only surmise was a war cry.

“What the fuck is that?” BT asked. I could tell by his expression that it was as disconcerting to him as it was to me.

The house vibrated under the assault of the low bass range the collective moan put out. Zombies were one thing. This deadly lament was wholly something else. There was a bizarre feel to it as the oscillation passed through my body threatening to liquefy the contents in my bowels. Was this planned? Did they know the effect this would have on us? I peeked through one of the shutters, hoping maybe to get a shot off at Durgan. He must have assumed this too because he was no longer in sight choosing to lead his troops from the rear instead of the front, I suppose. Well one good outcome from the moaning was that the zombies weren’t moving.

“Seems like we’ve got a bunch of blonde zombies.” I said pulling my face away from the glass.

“Huh? What are you talking about Mike?” Jen asked, clearly upset.

“They can’t moan and move at the same time.” I finished.

Jen rolled her eyes. BT shook his head.

“Hey they can’t ALL be gems.” I told them.

“Yeah but at least one or two would be nice.” BT yelled over the cacophony.

And as quickly as it had started it stopped. How could the moaning have been better? Because when the zombies were moaning they weren’t moving. The alarm bell crashed to the floor in a tumble of forewarning.

“This is it!” I yelled, louder than the situation dictated, nerves getting the better of me. “Might as well have a front row seat to the apocalypse.” I opened the front door, pulling the trigger on my rifle as I did, not even waiting to acquire a target, that would have been superfluous. It amazed me that they could even move forward being wedged that tightly together. Maneuverability was out of the question for them. I could only hope that as they closed in around the house that they would grind each other into oblivion as the space between them became less than non-existent. Some would surely die this way, crushed in a sea of zombianity. Good.

I was halfway through my first magazine when Jen stepped out beside me. She had moved on from her original pistol and was now touting her own assault weapon, an HK-17. I’ve got to admit even in the crappy predicament we were in I was a little jealous of her gun. It was a bigger caliber than my AR’s 5.56 mm round. It toted a much toothier 7.72 round, which had the added benefit of going in and out of one target and sometimes in and out of another. It was a pleasure to watch multiple heads snap back from the impact of her bullet. She was shredding through rows of zombies.

She looked over at me from the corner of her eye and through clenched teeth and a strained voice she said to me. “It might be better if you start shooting and stop watching me.”

“Oh yeah, sorry. It’s just that if I had known how cool that gun was going to be I would have grabbed another one.”

“Grabbed another what?” BT asked as he shouldered his way onto the porch.

“HK.” I told him. “Look what that thing is doing.”

“Holy shit.” BT said after a few seconds.

“Guys! Come on!” Jen shouted.

“Right.”

“Sorry.”

Although it didn’t really matter, our shots were more of a morale booster on our side. No amount of firepower we could muster was going to stop them. My barrel would melt before I so much as made any sort of noticeable difference. No, this was a show of defiance under insurmountable odds. We would not go like sheep to the slaughter. I scanned the zombies for any sign of Durgan. Just one shot, I just wanted one shot at his ass. Okay so not really his ass but you get the point. I wanted to kill him now so that I’d also have the opportunity to kick his ass as we made our ways to our respective resting places. No such luck though, he was out of sight.

“Mike.” Jen said pulling up from her sights.

BT was still happily triggering away, his semi-automatic 30-06 making short work of whatever got in its way. “I hope hell’s got some extra people working at the reception desk today!” He yelled.

“Hey that’s pretty good.” I told him.

“You liked that!” he yelled, still firing.

“One of your better, I’ve got to admit.”

“GUYS!” Jen yelled. “You two are worse than seven year olds.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I told her. BT laughed.

“I figured you would. BT stop firing, they’ve stopped.”

And they had, the zombies had paid a dear price for the ten feet of real estate they had captured. If lives were money, they were a very rich opponent.

“What are they doing Mike?” BT asked me.

“Well seeing as I am the imminent zombie zoologist expert, I would assume that they..”

“Fuck you, I get it, you don’t know either.” He said plainly. “This plan looked a lot better on paper.”

“Yeah smelled better too.” I said pulling one of my sweaters over my nose. “You tend to forget how much they stink.”

Jen added her own refuse to my cooled bile pile. “Eww fucking gross.” She said as she spit to get out the last remaining bits of ort. “I’ll never be able to eat again.”

“Might not be a lasting situation.” I told her.

She shrugged. We had known the odds were for shit. See this is exactly why I never liked to gamble.

“Talbot!” Came an artificially enhanced voice. “You ready to give up yet?” The bullhorn infused voice shouted again.

Shouting was not necessary over the shuffling zombies, but I was looking more for dramatic effect. “Durgan, come out from whatever hidey-hole you’re in and I’ll give you my answer face to face! Man to man, if I thought you were one!” His laughing cut off short.

“I’m going to kill you for that Talbot!” He shouted, this time without the aid of the bullhorn.

“Just for that?” I questioned Jen. “There’s so many other things he could have hung that card up on.”

“Come on big man!” BT yelled disparagingly. “I‘ll take you on without my gun!”

“What makes you think I would sully my purity by tangling with the likes of you.” Durgan shouted.

“Wow, I honestly didn’t think he could become any bigger of an ass than he already is (was) but then he goes and surprises me and adds racism to the mix. He’s really almost sort of amazing. That’s a lot of hate for one person.” I said to Jen and BT, making sure it was loud enough to be heard by all that were willing to listen.

That must have struck a chord in Durgan somewhere. He didn’t say anything else, at least not anything we heard, but the zombies started their relentless march up to the house.

Jen took a controlling breath like I had taught her and brought her rifle up. “Fuck my shoulder’s going to hurt tonight.” She said before she started pulling the trigger.

“Let’s hope so.” I mumbled as I brought my rifle to bear.

BT had not taken the opportunity to reload during the break in action and was struggling to catch up now. “Why doesn’t he just send them all out Talbot? Why this fucking game?” BT asked as he nearly shoved his bullets through the bottom of his magazine well.

“He’s like a little kid that just got a lollipop and he had no idea when he might get his next one.” BT looked over at me trying to figure out my bad analogy. “Savoring BT, he’s savoring this. He wants to be able to replay this whole thing over and over again in his pathetic twisted little fucking...”

“Racist mind.” BT finished.

The snow turned a rusty red as drums of blood were spilled. This ground was going to be the most fertile it had ever been next season and there would be no one here to tend the fallow fields. I shouldered my weapon, careful not to touch the dimly glowing barrel. I reached out and grabbed BT’s and Jen’s shoulder.

“Stop for a second!” I shouted. "You’re going to want to see this.” The echoing from BT’s last shot had just completed its airwave rippling when the first of my surprises struck. The loud metallic clanking was muffled by the foot of snow it was under, but the effect was not. The lead zombie crumbled face first into the snow, in what I could only imagine was extreme pain, although stoically he didn’t show it.

“What the hell happened?” Jen asked as another and then another zombie fell in succession.

“Bear traps.” I said triumphantly. With 1250 pounds per square inch of pressure, the device designed to incapacitate a bear would sheer right through the comparatively fragile leg of a man. This tactic would normally have a demoralizing affect on the enemy but for that you had to have a conscience. The following rows of zombies merely stepped onto and over their ground- wriggling brethren.

“Well not exactly what I was looking for, but entertaining none the less.”

“Good one.” BT said with a smile on his face.

“Men! And people wonder why I’m a lesbian.” Jen said as she brought her HK back up.

Fun time was over, I went into the house and grabbed my Dick’s sporting Goods pilfered 30-30, the AR was going to need a few minutes to come down to a serviceable temperature. I had a good ten seconds to think, which was nine more than I wanted. I wished that Tracy had left while the opportunity was available. I knew she wouldn’t, but still, it would suck to go ahead and sacrifice ourselves for nothing. It would be cramped in the van and the truck with the 14 of them, but cramped beats dead all the time. And we still come back to the original problem. IF, Jen, BT and I somehow survived, how the hell would we all fit? Sure we could sit in the back of the truck for a mile or two before we froze completely solid.

But making this stand was not completely about escape. It was about creating a chance to end this thing once and for all. Eliza not showing had thrown a serious wrench into my plans. I needed to kill the bitch. Without her death, her inexplicable link to Justin would remain and through him she had us. No, there was another way around that problem I could sever the connection on my side. I banged my head against the wall. No, that was not an option.

“You coming back to the party.” BT shouted from the porch.

“Just getting a sandwich.” I told him as I collected my wits, which were nearing their ends, and headed out again.

Again the zombies stopped, they were no more than 25 yards away from the us.

“Aw this shit is getting old Durgan!” I yelled.

“Any chance our boy is pulling an end around?” BT asked.

“What?”

“You know, while we’re all out here going to town out front he sends all of his boys in the back.”

“Oh shit, that would really not work out to our advantage.”

“I’ll check.” Jen yelled, already half way down the hallway.

“She’s fast.” BT noted.

“Who would have thought a lesbian would have that kind of speed?”

“You get into a lot of trouble with that mouth of yours, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question from BT it was a statement.

“Now that you say it, more than you’d figure.”

“Oh I doubt it.” He said.

“They’re about the same distance away back here as they are out there.” Jen shouted from the kitchen.

“Do you think lesbians are more spatially aware than your normal female?” I asked BT. “I mean they have to put their own furniture together and shit. Use a tape measure to hang shelves, that kind of thing.”

“Do you ever think before you start spewing from the mouth?” BT asked me.

“What? It’s an honest question.” I pleaded.

“What are you two children talking about?” Jen asked as she rejoined our small fire team.

“I was just wondering...”

“Nothing.” BT said as he thumped my chest with his forearm.

“I don’t even want to know. If it came from you two it must have to do with farting or something as equally juvenile.”

“Hey don’t lump me in with Talbot.”

They might have continued on for a few more seconds if I hadn’t intervened. “Wait something’s happening.”

Zombies were shifting their positions, turning completely sideways when possible.

“What now?” Jen asked.

“It almost looks like they’re moving to get out of the way.” I answered her.

“Getting out of the way for what?” BT asked. “They can’t have cave trolls can they?”

“Holy shit BT, are you a Lord of the Rings fan?” I asked him.

“Must have seen it ten times.”

“I didn’t figure you for a fantasy movie type.” I told him.

“Yeah that war at Isengard..”

“Oh God no!” Jen wailed.

I turned from her terrified face to the yard beyond. I wished I had shoved a bayonet into my eyes instead of looking out there. BT added his own pool to the up chuck muck.

“I can’t Talbot! I can’t deal with this!” She screamed.

Children from the earliest stages of walking to somewhere around ten years of age began to spill out into the front ranks of the invading horde. Jen’s gun clattered to the deck as she turned around. Placing both hands over her eyes, trying in vain to suppress the image, forever burned in her retinas. They were five feet thick before they stopped coming. Some were in pajamas. Some just in diapers and nothing else. Some completely naked and still others that looked as if they had changed into zombies mid snow ball fight.

So many of them! My heart was crushing in on itself. Breathing was becoming more difficult than it was worth. My instinct was to go out and comfort each and every one of them. Their flat black eyes belied no need for alleviation of their hurts. Never again would any of them need a boo-boo healing kiss on a scraped knee. Never again would they need a kind word after tough loss in pee-wee baseball. Never again would they need an ice cream cone after Susie called them a doo-doo head. I dropped onto my knees from the pressure of the heartache. I just wanted to roll over and watch the stars travel on by in my last moments on earth. Of all things, Durgan saved me.

Not so much him, as his personality, but it was a fine line anyway. And definitely not anything he did on purpose. But the cocksucker took my misery and despair and magically transformed it into rage. Pure unadulterated rage.

“How do you like me now, Talbot?” Came his derisive voice.

“How could you do this!?” Jen shouted to the house. “You’re crazy, do you hear me, you’re crazy.”

Durgan’s laugh echoed all around us. “Those small little teeth are going to feel like puppy’s teeth when they tear into you.”

Jen sobbed even more loudly.

“BT get her in the house.” I said coldly. BT didn’t look much better than Jen sounded.

“What are you going to do Talbot?” He asked as he grabbed at Jen to bring her into the house. He winced as he bent over to grab the discarded weapon.

“I’d like to tell you that I was going to do what I should have done a long time ago and go and kill that bastard. But that’s going to have to wait. No I’m just going to watch your backs while you go in and then we’ll just have to start phase two of our plan, I mean idea, a little earlier than expected, is all.”

“We’ll meet again Durgan!” I shouted out into the night. He responded before I had a chance to close the door.

“There’s no room for me where you’re going Talbot.” And he laughed some more.

Was he that far gone that he didn’t even realize what he’d just said? Are there many people that think going to hell is the epitome of a successful life? I wanted to open the door and get some clarification but that didn’t seem like a great idea. Insanity by definition is not rational and besides there was no sense in refreshing the image of hundreds upon hundreds of hungry zombie children in my head.

BT and Jen were huddled by the fire in the living room. Jen was shivering uncontrollably.

“BT get her down into the basement, I’ll take care of what needs to be done up here.” He nodded at me and scooped her limp but not lifeless body into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face into his broad chest. The added weight was causing him some serious pain in his injured leg but besides a small grimace he never voiced concern one over it. The house was bathed in darkness. The small candles and fire in the living room could only chase so many shadows away. The diffused moonlight that filtered through the storm shutters did more to stimulate this affect than diffuse it.

It was in this setting that I splashed gasoline across every treasured belonging that Carol and her family had ever owned. The propellant washed over and around picture frames, bleeding pictures into first something that resembled something from the twisted mind of Salvador Dali and finally into unendurable blotches of bled color. Like so many other things in this life that were now irretrievable. I had covered the house in nearly five gallons of the volatile fluid, upstairs and down. There was more than triple that amount laid out in various containers located strategically throughout the house. This house was going to burn like the fires of hell. My only concern was the hope that it took some of Eliza’s earth-wandering despots with it.

Jen’s fits of shivering had nearly stilled by the time I got down there, but she had not let go of BT’s neck as he sat in an old chair that had been relegated to the basement before it was to become a permanent fixture at a land fill.

“She going to be alright, when the time comes?” I asked BT.

“I’ll carry her if I have to.” BT said.

Jen didn’t move from her spot. Her words were muffled. Her message was not. “I’ll be fine, when the time comes but for now I’m staying where I’m at.” That didn’t seem to bother BT in the least. He was getting as much out of her as she was from him.

The smell of gasoline had begun to settle into the basement, it did wonders to mask the stench of death. Not sure if this was an angle Glade would want to use – NEW Gas scented plug-ins for all your zombie stench needs. Is grandma’s rotting corpse beginning to embarrass you? Do guests avoid coming to your house because of the decomposing children? Whisk away those horrible odors with our new GAS plug-ins, now available in Diesel and Oil fragrances! – Yeah you’re probably right, not much of a market for that.

We didn’t have long to wait as the first thump of a thwarted zombie hit the front door. The sound was not as loud as it should have been in the quiet house. Mostly because the zombie that walked into the frame of the door was probably only a girl of seven. An involuntary tremor of revulsion coursed through me. It was an instinctual response. I could no more control it than the weather. The thumping began to pick-up frequency and intensity as if who ever had been holding the invisible leashes had let go.

Dust from the floorboards above our heads showered down upon us as the house began to vibrate under the assault.

“You should get some Prell.” BT said. “It might help with that bad case of dandruff you’ve got going on Talbot.”

“Prell! Prell? How fucking old are you BT? They don’t even make Prell anymore.”

“Sure they do I bought some the da...”

“Stop it you two! Don’t you realize what is going on?”

I did it, I don’t know why but I did it. “No, what?” That set her off. She went on and on about being in the midst of some sort of apocalypse or such. I kind of lost the train of her rant.

“Stop it you two, just stop it!” Jen looked up from BT’s chest, her face looked like she had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. And not the soft, brain addled Mike Tyson but the lean mean ear biting machine.

The house was shaking on its foundation as the zombies closed in from all sides. I didn’t even want to think about the children that were pressed up against the walls. An explosion of glass tinkled to the ground in first one and then two and then a dozen different locations. This was followed almost immediately by the crashing open of what sounded like the backdoor, at least by the location of the many footfalls now above our heads. The front door lasted the longest but ultimately could not withstand the assault. Zombies had breached our meager defenses. The floorboards above us creaked and protested against the strain of so much weight.

Zombies rushed in to fill every void within the house looking for tasty treats. Furniture splintered and knick-knacks were ground to dust under so many feet. I waited as long as I could, allowing as many as the enemy as I could into the house. It wouldn’t be a fraction of the number it needed to be but my options were rapidly becoming diminished. Someone had smelled our hiding spot and zombies began to bump up against the cellar door. It was reinforced with two by fours that I had nailed across it but they wouldn’t hold forever. Although I was more concerned at this point with the ceiling over our heads giving out first. There was a noticeable bow to it.

“You two ready?” I asked as I stood up, grabbing the road flare from the cabinet next to me.

Jen extracted herself from BT and did her best to gingerly help BT to stand. I noticed as he shifted his weight around, he was being especially careful not to put any weight on his injured leg. He half hopped over to where I was and leaned against the cabinet. Jen had walked over to the bottom of the staircase, nervously looking up at the basement door as if expecting it to open.

BT leaned in to make sure Jen couldn’t hear but unless she had a bionic ear, that wasn’t going to be a problem. The general melee free-for-all up stairs made the simple act of thinking a difficult proposition.

“I can’t run, Mike.”

I knew he was serious. He called me by my first name. “Figured as much, what’s your idea?”

He looked candidly at me.

“Come on man, you wouldn’t have shuffled over here and tried to be all sneaky if you didn’t have some shitty idea.”

Jen involuntarily jumped when the door took a particularly savage blow.

BT looked nervously over at Jen before he began to speak. “I was thinking I’d stay behind and watch your backs.”

I took my pointer finger and thumb and grabbed my chin like I was really contemplating something deep. “Can’t do it BT.”

He looked incredulously at me. “What do you mean, Mike? You gonna carry me? Maybe buck ten Jen over there could heft me on her shoulders.”

Jen looked over. “What’s going on?” She asked as she crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed her arms, possibly to wipe the chill of death from herself.

“Oh BT thinks we should leave him behind when we leave.”

“What? Is he fucking nuts?” Jen yelled.

“That’s what I thought. So I basically told him no.”

“Guys I’m right here.” BT said lamentably.

“And what did he say when you told him that?” Jen asked.

“Oh well he got all indignant. And then he was berating me about being able to carry his extra large ass, and that maybe you’d be able to.”

“Mike, I’m right here!” BT shouted.

“So you told him that there was no way in hell that we were leaving him behind?” She asked.

“Well we hadn’t got that far, but those would have been my next words. And then he would have replied with something heroic like ‘You guys could save yourselves. If you try to help me then we’ll all die.’ And I would have came back with something equally heroic like ‘Either we all get out of here alive or none of us do.'”

“I get it guys.” BT said. “We knew this was a one way trip anyway.”

Jen gripped herself tighter. “Wow just got a chill. Someone must have just walked over my grave.”

I laughed my ass off. We all did. “That’s hilarious because well, because…” And I pointed to the ceiling with the shuffling of hundreds of feet was going on.

“You must be psychic.” BT added. And we started laughing all over again, like the crazed doomed souls that we were.

Jen's tears of joy, slowly but inevitably turned to real tears. BT went over to comfort her.

“Now seems as good a time as any.” I lit the flare and walked over to the far corner of the basement where I had previously drilled a silver dollar sized hole through the kitchen floor and into the basement. I had drilled the hole through a cabinet in the kitchen thus avoiding any chance the hole would be plugged by someone standing on it or by knocking over the large container of gas that was next to it. I looked at the flare for a few seconds more, letting the brilliant fire burn its final images into my memories.

This fire represented the end of so many things, and hopefully the beginning of a new safer life for my family. “I wish you were here to enjoy this with me Eliza,” I muttered as I thrust the flare up and through the hole. The flame flashed brilliantly as it came in contact with the gaseous vapors. I crinkled my nose as the smell of burnt arm hair wafted up. If I found this smell offensive, it was a vale of roses on a warm spring day after a brief rain shower compared to what assaulted my olfactory senses next. The smell of zombies can be topped by only one other smell, that of burning zombies. Roasting on an open pit was preferable to the cloying stink of melting decayed flesh that ran rampant through the farmhouse.

There were no screams of mercy coming from upstairs. No shrieks of terror or pain only the mindless hunt for food. There was no mass exodus from the premises. We knew this by the unrelenting assailment on the basement door. Would the door give before the floor? Or would we succumb to smoke inhalation, death by breathing in the dead. Oh just fucking gross.

“You guys ready?” I asked again.

“Let’s give this a shot.” BT said making sure his rifle was fully loaded.

Jen didn’t say anything but thankfully she picked up her HK, popped in a new magazine and nodded to me. We three stood for a moment side by side looking at the door that led to the bulkhead. Long moments passed. Realizing your death is imminent is one thing. Rushing headlong into it is completely another matter. The basement door cracked or it may have been a floor joist.

“Well that’s decided.” I said as I opened the basement door that led to freedom, in theory anyway.

The heavy aluminum bulkhead doors were heavily dented from the sheer number of zombies standing on them trying to get into the house.

“I guess the fire didn’t scare them away so much.” BT noted.

“Yeah, didn’t work in Little Turtle. Was expecting sort of the same result here.” I said. “Seems like the fire and heat might actually attract them instead of repel them.”

“Talbot, I figured we wouldn’t get out of this, but why did you volunteer? You have so much more to lose than either of us.” BT asked pointing to himself and Jen.

“I thought this was going to be a chance to give my family a fresh start. I didn’t think Eliza was going to pull a no-show on me. I wanted to be there personally, when she took her last…whatever she takes.”

It was definitively the cellar door that had shown signs of weakness previously. Zombies literally began to tumble down the stairs and onto the basement floor. BT unloaded a clip of 30 aught 6 rounds up and through the aluminum doors. Heavy, congealed bluish tainted blood ran in rivulets through the holes. I wanted to jump out of my skin as the, what I believed to be, caustic liquid ran down my head and neck and pooled in the small of my back as we all pushed up on the doors. A couple of zombies still on the doors had the actual benefit of a small carnival ride as they slid off and into a snowdrift.

Zombies were within touching distance before we opened up a large can of ass whooping. Those unlucky few that were closest to us quickly became nourishment for next year’s crops. But this was more futile than trying to bale water out of an already sunken ship. A veritable sea of healthy flesh challenged people awaited our embrace. Jen ran back down the stairs. I figured she had panicked when in actuality she may have saved a few extra precious seconds of our time remaining.

I heard the basement door slam shut below us. Zombies in front, zombies behind, the crackling heat of the fire to our backs was becoming increasingly difficult to tolerate.

“Any ideas?” BT asked me. “You know because if you do, now is not the time to keep them to yourself.”

“Only one at this point.”

BT didn’t look at me as I spoke, too intent on firing his rifle that he was. “Yeah what is it?”

“Keep firing until you have one round left.” The implied meaning in that sentence was clear.

He looked over briefly at me and lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. “Makes sense to me.” And he kept on firing.

Jen had shut the bulkhead doors and was standing on them looking out over the Dead Sea. “I can see them!” She said excitedly.

“Why haven’t they left yet?” I yelled back to her.

“I don’t know, but at least they’re safe.”

That was a heavy burden I could release from myself. At least they were safe. That part of the plan had worked perfectly. Carol’s homestead had two tornado shelters, which were used more for pickling and canning jam than anything else. One was located near the animal barn. The other was out in the field at least a good half-mile from the house. Put there so that if someone was caught unawares of an impending storm they would still be able to seek shelter. It was a rumored family secret that during prohibition that shelter had served as a lucrative still.

The plan was with Justin knocked unconscious we would move him to the shelter and blindfold him so that he would not have any idea that he was anywhere but where he thought he was, the basement. Eliza and her horde of smelly citizens would then converge on the house where we would allow them to come in, en masse, and then lay waste to Carol’s house. Once the zombies had passed the shelter on by, Tracy was supposed to get them all out of here, and we would (theoretically) meet up a mile or so down the road. That way if Eliza somehow survived this holocaust she would not know that we had also survived.

The problems with the plan were numerous. First off Eliza hadn’t come to the dance. Secondly we had way more party crashers than we had intended and thirdly, Tracy hadn’t fucken left before we died!!

“She sees us!” She’s waving, Jen yelled.

“If she tries to rescue us, I’m going to shoot her myself!”

Jen jumped down off the doors as the heat from the melting house began to blister us all.

We couldn’t see anything, except the nearest wave of zombies, which thankfully weren’t children. Most of them had become roasting marshmallows in the house behind us. But we all heard what came next.

BT looked up from his sights. “Is that a horn?”

CHAPTER 26

“Oh fucking Tracy, what are you doing woman?” I moaned. “Don’t make me die for nothing.”

We were all down to the dregs of our ammo, and I had been completely serious about holding one bullet for myself, when the cannon fire erupted and then I saw the familiar front grill of the white Ford pickup bracketed by two military vehicles. Trailing was your standard issue Marine Corps Humvee, in front was a six wheeled lightly armored troop transport. There were waves of joy and waves as despair, was the violence of existence worth it? Joy because help was coming, despair because it was too far away. The .50 caliber machinegun mounted on the turret of the troop transport, was shredding through zombies, head shots weren’t warranted when bodies were literally being torn in two. There’s a reason why the Geneva convention had expressly forbidden the act of shooting personnel with this type of gun. It made identifying the deceased a nearly impossible task.

I was gauging the number of rounds I had with how long it was going to take the trucks to get here. It was looking like a typical Vegas wager, the house was the favorite and we were the mark.

Maybe the sight of us, or my thoughts actually held sway over the caravan as they began to speed up.

“That’s not Tracy.” BT said from his higher vantage point.

“Nicole? Travis? Please tell me no.” I begged.

“Brendon.”

“Are you fucking kidding me BT?”

“Does now really seem like the time Talbot?”

As I was pondering this new information, my AR dry fired. My Glock was up next, I had 500 rounds but only 5 clips, once those fifty clipped rounds were gone, it was over, unless of course I could call ‘time-out’ and the zombies would allow it. Then I’d be able to reload and have a fighting chance.

The house behind us began to crumble, we had been able to push forward fifteen feet or so away, close enough to the flame that zombies couldn’t circle behind but not far enough to be safe from an imminent collapse and probable cooking.

“I sure wish they’d hurry.” BT said with no more expression than if he was waiting for a pizza.

“I’m out!” Jen yelled, on adrenaline fueled lungs.

I was two clips down and now I would have to pick up the pace with Jen’s sector of containment now flooding through. Zombies were close enough that I could see individual gore stained teeth, black cracked fingernails clawed through the air attempting to seek purchase. Foul breathe escaped through decayed airways. Zombies lit by flame began to spill out of the house behind us, somehow still able to hone in on us. Three magazines down, the Marines and Brendon were still fifty yards away.

“So fucking close.” We might have all said it, I can’t credit it to any one of us.

The trucks slowed minimally as the .50 cal shots had to be aimed more precisely, lest they take us out too. The troop transport was in danger of high centering over the sheer number of zombies becoming so much road kill. The snail paced crawl may be saving the truck from getting stuck but at the cost of our lives. I saw exactly when the driver of the transport weighed those two factors on the scale and said ‘Fuck it.’ The bluster of the truck’s engine hitting full throttle cut through the dull roar of the burning cinder block behind us. Zombies flung in the air like a giant spoiled baby was done playing with his GI Joes and Barbie dolls and was throwing them around in the fits of a tantrum.

The armor was beginning to fold in on itself under the pressure of so many collisions. As the lead vehicle pushed past, Brendon pulled up broadside just as I had expended the last bullet in my clip.

“All aboard!” Brendon yelled in his best train conductor voice.

Jen almost cleared the other side of the truck bed as BT hurled her up and in. BT’s leg might not be working well but his arms were fine as he followed her immediately up and in. BT’s ass had no sooner made contact with the bed and I was in his lap.

“Didn’t know you cared.” BT said as he put me in a more respectable position.

“Please have your tickets ready to be punched!” Brendon yelled through the rear facing windows as he crushed down on the accelerator.

Zombies pressed in from all sides. I grabbed a shovel and did my best to keep them at bay as the truck swayed violently from side to side. BT had found a tire iron and was making anything within striking distance rue the day it had gone over to the dark side. Jen had found an axe handle that looked like it had already been used for nefarious purposes as the end of it was deeply stained a suspicious brownish red color.

Jen was swinging violently, when she made contact, the vibrations would shoot up her arms.

“Be careful!” I yelled to her.

Whether she would have heeded me or not, the warning was a beat too late. The zombie she had been lining up to strike, had fallen when Brendon ran over its leg. Jen pitched forward precariously balanced between relative safety and death. Death won out. I watched the resignation in her face as she fell out of the truck bed.

“JEN!” I screamed. I jumped to the other side of the truck bed. My hand brushed hers as she slid away from my touch. Her other hand shot out even as the first of the zombies sunk his teeth into her back. I was able to make a tenuous grasp on her hand, dragging her along behind the truck.

“Don’t let me go Mike!” She screamed. “PLEASE!” She begged as another zombie took hold of her thigh, teeth first. He tore a ragged piece of flesh away from her as I continually pulled her behind the truck.

She was dead. We both knew it. But I was not going to let go. The blood vessels in her eyes burst as a zombie ripped through her calf muscle, long strips of meat hung between its greedy lips. I turned to gain as much momentum as I could before I began to pull her back into the truck.”

Her hand went slack. The weight I dragged increased as zombies jumped on her, feasting as we went. I let go of her hand and sat back up. The sharp pain in my shoulder a reminder of what had just happened. BT was looking at me in what I could only describe as shock. He moved faster than any man his size had a right too. He grabbed me and slammed me to the floor of the truck bed. I was beginning to feel light headed. He must have really knocked my head against the floor.

“It wasn’t my fault BT.” I said through fogged vision.

“I know that you damned fool, you’ve been shot.”

“Shot? Zombies don’t shoot guns. You’re crazy man. It sure is getting dark quick.”

“Not a gun, a crossbow.”

A crossbow! A fucking crossbow? Who shoots somebody with a crossbow? What am I an elk? What’s next? Someone gonna whip out a mace? Maybe a scimitar?

My shoulder, for lack of a better term, unraveled. Muscle, tendon, sinew, whatever, just literally began to curl like wet parchment. My biceps bulged, rivaling the Hulk, as my ripped tendons rolled up into them. I noticed with a note of envy how large my muscles looked even as my vision began to blur. (Guys can be vain! Just because I was dying of blood loss and shock didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate how large my damaged muscles looked.) Searing pain immediately made me wish I would just pass out and die and be over with this. As bone separated from tissue, I’m pretty sure I involuntarily blackened my eye as my arm flung up. That was the least of my problems and I wouldn’t have even registered the fact had not my right eye dimmed and then blacked out before my left one.

“Talbot!” Someone screamed. Sounded like someone I knew. Well I must know them if they knew my name, right? Who gives a shit. “Talbot!” Again with the screaming but it sounded further away, even as I felt arms around me. From somewhere very distant I heard my wife. “Talbot don’t you di….”

I accelerated along a black tube as light emanated from every direction. Its source I could not discern. My speed seemed to be accelerating, although I think it was all relative. It wasn’t me that seemed to be moving so much as the tunnel was streaming past. I wanted to reach out and touch the wall to see if that was the case but I was afraid of doing more damage to my injured wing. Aw what the hell, my arm was barely attached anyway what more could I do. I moved my right arm around, unbelievably happy with how pain free the movement was. ‘Holy crap.’ I muttered. ‘He must have missed. Maybe it’s the wrong arm.’ Having been ambidextrous my entire life I often confused my left from my right. When I moved my left arm and again felt no pain the light of recognition dawned. ‘Holy Shit! I’m dead!’ That thought wasn’t nearly as dreadful as I would have imagined. Oh I was scared to a point, maybe more concerned. Alright I was a little freaked out. My thoughts obviously centering around what is at the end of this tunnel? Do I pull a Wile E. Coyote and smash face first into a faux hole in the wall? Do I come out to a huge drop and fall eternally? (Oh that would suck.) IS there a Heaven? Or worse a hell? My actions thus far in my life could probably gain my entry into either. Was my eternity going to come down to a rock, paper, scissor game between God and Satan? Wow, sacrilege on my final journey cannot be good in the ledger books. Maybe it would be possible to hang out in this tunnel a little longer and weigh my options. Wind buffeted me back as I tried in vain to approach the walls. The speed was picking up I knew I was nearing my final destination, no stops, no layovers. I had a momentary pang for my wife and kids. I did feel remorse that I was dying but only because I wouldn’t be there for them. I had ultimately accepted my fate, for what other choice was there? When I felt another presence nearby, it wasn’t nearly as comforting as I would have expected from the almighty. There was a great sense of anger, of sadness, of a life truly unfulfilled. It took me long moments to pull these vaporous thoughts away from own, the intermingling almost made me believe these errant thoughts were mine. Out of the corner of my awareness I caught movement as it at first trailed behind me by some lengths and then hastened to catch up and pass me by.

“Brendon?” I shouted. So lost was he in his mortality he took no notice of me as he shot on by. I watched in the distance as a light infinitely brighter than what I was experiencing now blazed in acceptance, in love, in its warm embrace. These euphoric feelings washed over and around me. My pang of regret paled, faded and was washed away. Those feelings lasted long after the walls of my tunnel slowed and then began to shift direction, back into the blight, the pain, the hurt, the uncertainty, the love. “He’s back.” Someone familiar sobbed from a hundred million miles away.

Epilogue

Cops vs. Talbot

TALBOTSODE #1

So I started early dealing with the po-po. I was 16 years old when my high school thought it would be a good idea to deter drunk driving by placing a wrecked car on the front lawn of the school. For some reason that completely eluded me at that moment in life, I thought that was the most inconsiderate act possible. So of course that night my friends and I went and bashed in any and all remaining glass on that car. By the time the cops got there we were out of sight in the woods across the street. We watched them as they shone their lights across the wreckage of the wreck. We also saw them park inconspicuously across the street hoping that said vandals would return.

You know I went back. It’s in my nature. This time it wasn’t with a tire iron. I had made a Molotov cocktail out of some gas and shampoo poured into a coke bottle. My friends had told me ‘I was crazy’ and ‘You’re not going to do it’. So, you know of course, all that really does is incite somebody above and beyond normal stupidity into super stupidity. I was a fast kid, I played half back for the freshman team. How fast was about to be tested.

I went a little further in the woods, away from the cops and emerged from a spot where they could not see my egress. As I walked back up the road towards the school I tried my best to act as innocent as possible. I knew they were watching me. I could feel it. They wanted me to do something wrong just as bad as I wanted to. My first step off the relative safety of the sidewalk and onto the lawn of the school had the police on high alert. My time was short. I pulled out my trusty Bic. The first flick of flame ignited the gas soaked rag immediately. I was momentarily stunned by the flash of fire. The cops however, were not. Their car popped into drive and the engine revved followed almost instantaneously by their headlights turning on. I was bathed in headlights. The iridescent blues and reds sent me hauling ass.

I ran as close to the wreck as I dared, reaching back for all I was worth I hurled the bottle at the car, hoping that I hadn’t missed and have it hit anticlimactically on a tire, or sail harmlessly overhead landing on the soft grass. Neither of those things happened as the bottle smashed throat first into the rear quarter panel. The ensuing fireball probably saved my ass as the cops sheared off from their intercept course.

I’ll give them this though, they recovered quickly and were once again in hot pursuit. At one point the bumper of the cop car actually touched my ass. If I had stumbled there wouldn’t have been a thing in the world he could have done to avoid running me down, like some common criminal, which I guess I was now. When I got to the end of the school grounds I was met with an eight foot high chain link fence. Now remember, I was 16 and in great shape, one jump had me three quarters up and my body was half over the top when the cop car fishtailed to a stop directly underneath me.

The cop actually had the nuts to yell at me to stop. I told him to fuck off as I retreated into the woods. I was semi-surprised he hadn’t shot me. The car was towed off the grounds the very next day.

Talbot – 1, Cops - 0

TALBOTSODE #2

At the ripe old age of 17, having not learned a damn thing from the smashed up car in the previous story, I decided to leave a party I was at, bad idea. I was closer to four sheets to the wind when I decided that I needed to go to my house and grab my marijuana paraphernalia. Must have been 10 different bowls at that party to smoke out of, but NO I had to have mine. So I got behind the wheel of my car and luckily, not a 100 yards from where I started, I smashed into a curb. It blew out my right front tire. I grabbed the keys out of the car, opened the trunk and then drunkenly scattered everything I had in my trunk on the ground around the car.

I couldn’t find the jack to save my life. Although looking back, not finding the jack probably did save my life and someone else’s. I must have been making a hell of a racket because someone yelled out their window that I should just leave because they had called the cops. I might have mumbled something incoherently back to them, but in my addled brain all I could think was that I’d better change this tire quick before they got here.

Now I don’t know if it was a slow night at the old Police station or I blacked out somewhere along the line but the Boys were at the scene in what seemed like a heartbeat.

“Son, you need to stop what you’re doing right now,” The cop said to my back. How I missed the glaring lights on the top of his car is not really all that much of a mystery.

I stood up smacking my head on the trunk lid as I did so. ‘Stuff’ was littered in a semi circle around my position, there was an empty cooler, a lawn chair, a blanket or two, a bunch of clothes, most were not mine, no clue, and the jack. I stared down at it like it had just materialized.

“Son why don’t you put that stuff back in the car.” The cop said to me, by now his partner had rolled up in another squad car.

I’ve got to admit I was pretty impressed with myself that I hadn’t said anything stupid up to this point. I just kind of bent at the waist, wobbled a bit and put all the stuff back. ‘Stupid jack.’ I mumbled as if that were the root of all my evil.

Another squad car rolled up. “Why don’t you come over here son so we can do a field sobriety check.”

“Sounds good.” I answered him. At least those were the words I intended, I think ‘Smoods gound.’ Came out.

“Okay son, I want you to walk heel to toe for ten steps.” And then he proceeded to show me the technique to perform this magic routine. It’s kind of like when you go to a carnival and the carnie working the booth where you have to stand the coke bottle up with the ring attached to a rope on the end of a stick demonstrates the proper techniques. He does it like five times in a row. So you figure when you hand him over your five bucks you’ve got this thing in the bag and your girlfriend is going to be so happy. Maybe just maybe, you’ll get second base under the shirt instead of over. What you don’t realize is that the ring on the end of your rope is slicked with Vaseline and you have absolutely no chance of ever winning that teddy bear or of feeling Suzy’s tits.

So that was the same perspective I had when I went into the sobriety test. The moment I placed the heel of my left foot onto the toe of my right I lost all sense of equilibrium. The cop had to literally catch me as the ground rose up to meet me.

“That’s far enough son.” Was followed immediately by handcuffs.

I was being fingerprinted when my mother came to the station to bail me out.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Were her first words to me.

Mine to her. “Who are you?” I was that gone, that’s no exaggeration. I didn’t recognize my own mother. How far down the rabbit hole do you have to be for that to happen? I had dodged a bullet by having to take the keys out of the ignition to open the trunk. In a newer model of car, had I had a switch to open the trunk, my charge would have gone from public intoxication to DUI.

Talbot – 1, Cops – 1

TALBOTSODE #3

The next story isn’t earth shattering, more of another slice in the pie. I was somewhere in the 18 year old range and a gaggle of us had gone up to New Hampshire camping. It was one of those lost weekends you spend with friends, laughing partying having a great time, kids being kids. So now it’s Sunday afternoon and we’re heading back down I-95 to Massachusetts and of course we’re drinking. That’s what you do as stupid kids. At least this time I wasn’t driving or attempting to do so. The driver of the van I was in, needed to stop and do what any beer drinker does, pee. So we pull into this rest stop for a break and someone pulls out a Frisbee. We spread out in the parking lot of this rest area and just start playing some catch. Nothing that so far was going to get me on the FBI’s most wanted.

So my buddy Kevin throws me this wicked long pass. I chase it down and snag it one handed. The other hand was wrapped firmly around a Budweiser. I turn back around smiling only to witness the six people I was playing with whipping their, what I could only imagine were full bottles of beer into the woods. I was like ‘WTF’ is going on as I took a long pull from mine.

“How old are you son?”

I turned, bottle still to mouth, a cop in a cruiser was inches from me.

“Twenty one.” As I gulped down what I had just drank.

“Got any ID to that affect?”

Five minutes later I was handcuffed and in the cruiser. Minor in possession.

Talbot – 1, Cops - 2

TALBOTSODE #4

Alright so you are starting to get a recurring theme. Talbot plus alcohol, bad. It was freshman year at college. My buddy Paul and I were hanging out in the common grounds of our new school just partying it up with some other people. We were having a good time playing Frisbee. Holy shit now that I’m writing this down, maybe it’s the Frisbee that attracts the trouble, food for thought.

Eventually Campus 5-0 shows up. They’re about as intimidating as mall cops.

They tell us we need to get rid of our beer. My friends all start pouring their beers on the ground, like we had done so many times before with local cops. But see that’s not what I heard. I took the literal translation. I started pounding my beers down. I was two beers down and going for my third before the shocked cop could even begin to react. I just think he was so amazed that somebody wasn’t complying with him, but in my defense I feel that I was. He said, ‘Get rid of those beers.’ He never once said how and that’s what I told him.

He was effen pissed as he slapped the bottle out of my hand and maybe a little amused. He chewed me a new one for a minute or two but didn’t give me a ticket. So I figure that’s a win for me because up until the day the zombies came that was still a source of amusement among me and my friends.

“Oh dude, you remember that time. That cop told us to get rid of our beers and you just started drinking all of yours?”

Of course I do, that shits hilarious!

Talbot – 2, Cops – 2

TALBOTSODE #5

This next story once again does involve alcohol. It was my first foray into a more serious realm of difficulty and more importantly I now had a record. It started off innocently enough as most things like this do. It was the summer after freshman year and I had gone to one of my high school buddies house for a party. He used to live in an awesome house right next to a lake. You could literally walk off his backyard and into the water.

The party went as you would expect most parties to go, there was beer drinking, much raucous noise, loud music and the occasional couple necking in discreet corners. Chris Walsh changed all this when he committed the most heinous of party fouls. He passed out first. I’m not much into what happened to him next, but if you pass out first, it’s pretty much an unwritten rule you’re going to get fucked with. He got the typical sharpie treatment to the face, you know ‘Insert Penis Here’ and then someone drew an actually pretty good replica of a penis next to the message. I came back later to find out that someone had busted open some make-up and applied some liberal amounts of eye shadow and rouge. He was the ugliest hooker I had ever seen.

When it became evident that these small time measures were not going to awaken Sleeping Beauty, the ringleaders upped the ante. They wrapped him up in a blanket, walked him through a cheering crowd in the backyard, I might have been one of them, to the end of the pier and then unceremoniously threw him and the blanket into the water. At the end of the pier the water is somewhere in the 3 foot range, entirely too shallow to drown in, under normal circumstances. But when you are passed out drunk and wrapped tightly in a blanket the equation changes a bit.

The trio that had carried Chris and then dropped him in the water had walked off the pier and were busy high-fiving themselves. A few party goers, myself included were beginning to become concerned when Chris didn’t immediately surface spitting out lake water. This girl Maureen was the first into the water. Her friend Sandra was next, followed almost immediately by myself. By the time I got in the water the party was quiet. Someone had even lowered the music to a dull whisper. Maureen had grabbed the soaked blanket and was dragging it ashore, Sandra and myself quickly aided her.

Within a few seconds, we had the frantically thrashing about Chris on the shore. He looked like a butterfly trying to shake its cocoon. He wasn’t having much luck. He had been moving so violently to get free that he cracked Maureen in the side of the head with his fist as she helped him. She fell to the ground with a solid thump. Chris was enraged as he stood, screaming at the now cowering Maureen.