'Til Death Do Us Part

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Mike Journal Entry 18

“She’s getting bold,” BT said as I came back in the door.

“Our little girl is growing up,” I told him, wiping a mock tear away from my eye.

“Should have put her over my knee a few more times,” he said, following me into the room. “What’s she doing?”

“I’m thinking trying to figure out why her zombies aren’t eating us yet,” I told him.

“I didn’t know she cared.”

“Don’t worry, she doesn’t.”

“Any ideas?”

“Really?” Tracy asked BT. “You really want an unsolicited idea from Mike?”

“At least it’s entertaining,” BT told her.

I wanted to join in the reverie, but I could feel time slipping through our fingers. “She has us pretty buttoned up here with the zombies and the guards, but she’s not going to wait us out. Eliza isn’t much on patience.”

“What are you thinking?” my dad asked.

“She has every tactical advantage right now. She’s going to try and find a tank or rocket launchers or a damn Harrier Jet. We’ve got to stop her before that happens.”

“You’re kidding, right?” BT asked. “I merely asked you for an idea…not an overabundance of ways to get killed.”

“BT, you should know better, man. All of my ideas are laced with an overabundance of ways to die.”

“I know,” he said, sitting down heavily. “When do we go?”

“Are you serious? Are you that devoid of short-term memory that you cannot remember what happened the last time you went on the offensive against Eliza?” Tracy was shrieking.

If I thought Eliza was mad at me when I had given her the finger, I had yet to see Tracy’s ire when I told her of my next great adventure. She definitely raised the anger bar. I think I was going to get my slogan trademarked: Michael Talbot, bringing hate and discontent to women everywhere for forty-plus years.

“I could crank up the outage on the frequency modulator,” Mad Jack piped up.

“Okay.” I answered, trying to figure out where he was going with it. Lord knew I’d had enough practice with John the Tripper I should have been able to figure him out, although that wasn’t a fair comparison. MJ was logic based, John was acid based.

“Well that would mean more power was going out,” he added.

“I get that, but to what end?” I asked.

“Mad Jack, you said that putting out too much power could fry the components,” Ron said with concern.

“I did say that,” Mad Jack pronounced.

“How could someone that snorted, inhaled or smoked enough drugs to finance a cartel sound as similar to someone that graduated the top of his class at MIT?” I demanded, throwing my hands in the air. “Ron? Help me out here, man. I don’t speak genius.”

“Relax, Mike, he usually has so much going on in his head, he doesn’t know what he’s told us or what he’s thinking. He’ll get there in a minute.”

The cursory minute passed. We were all waiting for some more information that was not coming. Mad Jack was pacing the room, and it looked like he was about to leave before Ron stopped him.

“MJ?”

“I need some more transistors,” Mad Jack told him as if that explained everything.

“Okay, we all get that you want to put more power through the modulator. The Jeopardy bonus round question is why?” Ron wanted to know.

“Jeopardy is for the uneducated,” Mad Jack stated contemptuously. “The questions are so easy.”

I had stopped watching Jeopardy years ago when I realized that I hardly ever knew the answers to even the easiest hundred dollar questions. Who needs to be reminded daily of their ignorance?

Ron tried Psych 101 on MJ. “The reason for increasing power to the frequency modulator that disrupts the thought patterns of the zombies is?”

“Nice…he phrased it as a question,” Gary said, smacking my arm to make sure that I was watching the riveting action.

“To drive the zombies back, thus obscuring our vial-laden exit from the armed guards,” Mad Jack retorted.

Now all of a sudden it was a riveting conversation. “That’s brilliant,” I said aloud.

“I know,” Mad Jack said.

“But you’re not thinking escape, are you, Mike?” Tracy asked.

“Where would we run to that she wouldn’t find us? Where could we run that was more secure? Where could we run that was as well supplied? Where—”

“I get it,” she lashed out.

“Plus I have someone waiting in a truck out there that I need to bring into the fold.”

“What? Who?” came the myriad of questions.

I quickly explained where I had discovered Azile and how I had rescued her. I somehow failed to tell them that she had driven the majority of the way back because she was better at it than me, it must have slipped my mind.

“You just left her out there?” Tracy accused me.

“You know, I wasn’t all that sure I was going to make it back here. I figured she was safer in the truck,” I said, defending myself.

“You need to go get her,” Tracy said.

“I know that, dear. But it’s not like I can just walk out the door and do that now, is it?”

“Don’t you get condescending with me.”

“Ooh look, the finger should be coming out any second,” BT said to Gary.

“I don’t know why you’re so smug,” Tracy said, turning her wrath to the big man. “You’re going out there to help him.”

“Me?” BT begged off. “I always have to pull his scrawny ass out of a scrape.”

“And that’s exactly why you and I are going with him.”

“Oh no,” BT and I said simultaneously.

“I’m used to saving his ass, I can’t be looking out for you, too,” BT shouted.

“BT, I’d been saving his ass for close to twenty-five years before you ever came in the picture. I think if anyone is qualified to do it, it’s me.”

“I hate when you two do this,” I told them.

“You keep out of this,” BT told me.

Tracy and BT were still arguing about who was better at keeping me alive when I turned my attention back to Mad Jack who had lost all interest with the ravings of the monkeys below the one-forty intelligence quotient level.

“How far back can you push the zombies?” I asked him.

“A couple of hundred feet at the most.”

“Will it be fast?”

Mad Jack thought about it for a moment. “Yes, they’ll want to get away from the signal as quickly as possible.”

“Okay. Will it be like a fire drill where everyone leaves in an orderly fashion, or will it be like a real fire when everyone tramples over each other?”

“The latter I would imagine,” Mad Jack replied, looking up as he pondered the answer.

“Latter…that means last, right?”

He gave me the ‘how have you survived this long’ look.

I could have easily returned the gaze.

“There’s one small problem with increasing the power output that much, though.”

“Is there any chance you can just tell me what the problem is without me playing game show host?”

“It’ll only last for sixty-four-and-a-half seconds.”

“Exactly sixty-four-and-a-half seconds…or can we give or a take a second or two.”

“Science doesn’t lie,” he stated vehemently.

“Alright sixty-four-and-one-half seconds it is, what happens after that?”

“No more signal.”

“No more extended signal?” I asked hoping.

“No more signal, period, ever. I don’t have the supplies here to recreate the box,” Mad Jack told me in no uncertain terms.

“Wait so you know to the half second when the box is going to blow but you can only approximate the distance the zombies will be effected?” I asked, because I had to.

He shrugged his shoulders like I should leave the heavy thinking to the experts.

Now came the weighing out option. We would need the cover of the zombies to be able to get out of the house, but once the signal died, thousands of zombies would be pressed up against the structure like the skin of an apple.

“How long will it take for the modifications?” I asked him.

“You mean how long will it take to turn a knob?”

“Hilarious.”

“I need to do some mods first, shouldn’t take more than an hour, then it really is the turn of a knob.”

Within a moment or two of Mad Jack going off to do whatever voodoo science he did to tweak his box, I was sitting at the kitchen table loading magazines.

“You’re not really going to allow Tracy to go with you are you, Mike?” Ron asked, coming up to the table.

“Ron, you’re married…when’s the last time you told your wife she couldn’t do something and she listened?” I asked him back. I gave him some credit; he actually spent a moment or two thinking about it. As if, he would have ever forgotten about a victory that significant.

“Listen, I know I don’t have any military training,” Ron began, “but I’d like to go out there with you.”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea. The defense of this house falls squarely on your shoulders. And as soon as MJ’s box fails, we’ll be in full-press mode here. When we get Azile, and maybe take a swipe at Eliza, we’re going to need someplace to come back to.”

Ron looked equal parts relieved and distressed.

“You know I appreciate the offer. We’ll be back before you know it,” I told him as I loaded my fifth magazine. I wasn’t going to die from lack of ammunition—of that fact I was certain.

I could hear Tracy and BT still going on with the merits of who was better equipped to save my ass when I got up from the table.

“We’re leaving in fifteen minutes. You guys maybe want to load up?” I asked them.

“We’re not done here,” Tracy told BT.

“Not by a long shot,” BT told her as he pulled on the waistband of his pants. “Thanks for saving me,” he said quietly as he walked past.

I just laughed.

One more time I half-heartedly tried to convince Tracy not to come; almost immediately the finger of doom came out and I yielded.

We were huddled by the basement door waiting for Mad Jack to dial up some zombie despair. Beads of sweat were glistening on Tracy’s forehead, BT had a look of consternation on his face, and I had just swallowed a live knot of garter snakes—at least that was what my belly felt like. I had not a lick of concern for myself, it was spread out for my two traveling companions.

“What some gum?” Gary asked, his mouth stuffed to near jaw-bursting proportions. He walked over to us extending a giant pack of bubble gum.

The idea of chewing anything that didn’t start with Alka was making the writhing things in my stomach start a gymnastic routine. “I’m good,” I told him.

“Oops, wait,” Gary said as he listened to the crackling in his two way radio. “T-minus ten seconds until operation Zombie Nudge.”

“Zombie Nudge?” BT lipped to me.

“Who knows,” I told him back.

“Does anyone know what the ‘T’ stands for?” Gary asked.

Over the radio I could hear Mad Jack’s explanation. “Ballistic equations begin with the variable ‘t’ minus the rest of the algebraic equation which accounts for time and distance.”

“Well now I can die in peace,” BT said.

“Now?” Tracy asked. “This is the time you want to use that phrasing?”

“No shit,” I told him. “Pretty fucking insensitive, BT.” I chided him.

“Bullshit, Talbot, that’s something you would normally say. I must have just been channeling you or something,” BT snapped back. “And now I’m going into battle with a man with a tinfoil hat on and you’re giving me shit? That’s like the skunk calling the wet dog smelly!”

“What the fuck does that even mean, BT? Have you lost your damn mind?” I asked.

“I must have!” he shouted.

“Boys!” Tracy said.

“What?” we asked, turning on her.

Gary popped an over-sized bubble. “Mad Jack turned the dial.”

That stopped us right quick. I opened the basement door to take a peek outside. Not much was happening; the zombies closest to us were trying their best to not become impaled in the trench from the push behind them of newcomers. Then I began to see a sudden change as they went from holding their spot to shuffling backwards, and within a matter of seconds, they were in a full on ‘retreat’ mode.

I had not a clue how we were going to get through the cluster fuck of zombies, all the closest ones were running to get out of range while the others behind were still forging forward and then there were the multitudes that were caught in the crossfire. Zombies by the dozens were being destroyed or irreparably damaged as they were caught within the vise like grips, of the outflow and influx as they in turn also tried to escape the invisible signal that was washing over them.

“Not going to get any better than this,” I said as I swung the door open.

Tracy gasped at the scene before her, the screams that would be ensuing would have been deafening if they were still people, even so the cracking of bones and cartilage was disturbing maybe even more so because it was done in silence.

“Good luck, I’ll save you some gum,” Gary said as we ran to the right and towards the back of the house and the small footbridge. Gary closed the door and I could hear him engage the fortress-like steel bar across the door.

I couldn’t see any of the guards from our vantage point, but I had to have confidence in the fact that they would be fleeing their posts. Vial or not, zombies running at you tends to loosen bladders and bowels. Our progress was hampered by the jumble of zombies strewn around the yard by the time we reached the trailing edge of the zombies still closest to the house we had in the neighborhood of fifteen seconds before the box fried itself.

The tree line was easily within distance with nothing in our way, fighting through the zombies was going to make it close. Once the box stopped broadcasting the zombies would again turn and head for the house, we would be caught and in a world of hurt, much like the plethora of zombies littering the ground.

“BT, we need to make a hole,” I said pointing towards the nearest large oak. In all fairness by ‘we’ I meant him. He attacked the zombies with gusto, crushing over them like a fat mom does dieticians. I had no sooner touched bark on the tree when zombies in mid-stride changed their direction heading back from where we had come.

“Good luck Gary,” BT said under his breath, his chest heaving from the exertion of zombie tackling as he leaned against the tree looking back at the house that was about to become besieged.

Zombies were within inches as they streamed past, a few took a quick glance at us as they ran by, but they seemed to be so used to the vials they wouldn’t investigate any further.

I motioned to BT and Tracy that I was going to move around the tree. BT acknowledged me; Tracy I had to touch to get her to focus on me and not the shamble of zombies close by. I stayed tight to the trunk of the tree. I figured BT and Tracy were following. I don’t know which of us was more surprised me or the guard when I came around the other side of the tree. He had been scratching his head, I would imagine at the peculiar behavior of the zombies when I showed up.

My rifle had been up against my chest, I would not be able to pull far enough away to use it anyway, the knife strapped to my thigh seemed the best course of action. That was up until BT came over the other side. I winced as BT’s butt stock made bone crushing contact with the side of the man’s skull. His eyes didn’t even have enough time to roll back in his head as he fell over.

“Thanks, man,” I told BT. “Hold Tracy back for a sec would you?” I asked as I leaned down. Blood was oozing from the side of the man’s head as I reached down and yanked the vial off his neck. I stuck the chain in my pocket, then grabbed the man by the waistline and the back of his collar, when a slight break came in the zombie traffic I tossed him a few feet into the fray. He moaned for a few heartbeats as the zombies made short work of him.

BT gave Tracy the all clear sign when the zombies closed the gap around the man.

“Why the delay?” she asked, looking around.

“Mike ripped one, I waited until it cleared away.”

“Thank you for that,” Tracy said, placing her hand on BT’s arm.

I flipped him off.