Mark Tufo

Chapter Seven – Mike Journal Entry 6

Eliza was late or early (and gone), or she had taken a different route or she had laid a trap for us, realizing what I was going to do. These three very different scenarios kept playing out in my head, each vying for its own time in the spotlight. I could deal with her being late or even the trap. Those two scenarios at least meant we were still in the game.

If she had passed while we were messing with Re-Pete, then every second we wasted here put my family in more danger. Another route could potentially be as bad, but as long as we were running parallel to her and not hours behind, I could deal with that also. That crawling sensation kept worming its way up my back that Re-Pete had been some sort of diversion and she was laughing as she barreled down the highway. The wondering was a nightmare. I was seconds away from pulling the whole plug when I noticed the slightest sway to a young sapling; it was not windy.

“Everybody down!” I yelled.

Ten seconds went by, twenty seconds, I think we were closing in on a minute and still nothing. I was beginning to feel a little foolish and now that nagging itching sensation was coming back. Screw it. I was ready to go. Gary reached out and put his hand on my shoulder when he sensed that I might be getting ready to move. How I let the sound of that caravan slip by my senses, I had no clue.

“Thanks,” I told Gary.

“You always were a little impulsive,” he told me.

BT was on my left side, looking intently at the rolling nightmare coming our way. His grip tightened on his rifle. Fat beads of sweat rolled off his forehead.

“You good, big man?” I asked him.

“Right as rain,” he answered without ever taking his eyes off the lead truck. “You think she’s in that first one?”

“Maybe before that invasion on Camp Custer when I almost killed her. She might be an arrogant bitch; but she’s also a self preservationist.”

“Too bad,” BT said.

The three of us were down in a culvert on the side of the road. It was almost steep enough that we were just about standing where we lay. Two tandem-trailer semis thundered past. Following them was what appeared to be an endless chain of troop transports and more tractor-trailers.

“Looks like Eliza’s playing for keeps,” Gary said, sticking his head over the embankment slightly.

“When has that ever NOT been the case?” BT asked.

I can’t say that I had ever seen BT quite as nervous as he was now and I was picking up on it, which in turn, made me more nervous. Gary seemed blissfully ignorant of it all.

“Sure would be nice to get a hold of one of those troop transports,” Gary said.

“I vote for just making it through the day,” I told him.

“I second that,” BT said, sticking his hand up slightly.

We could hear gunshots up ahead of us. Paul, Bryan and Mrs. Deneaux were holding up their end and we were getting close to seeing what we could do about holding our own.

It was long seconds before the entire rolling army knew that it was under attack, but the lead tandem-trailer truck lying on its side kind of put a damper on their forward progress. The screeching metal as the truck slid sideways down the highway grated on my fillings, the vibrations hurting my teeth. I was thankful I did not have a steel plate in my head; it would have probably scrambled my brains more than they already were. The large truck had finally come to a stop. Sporadic fire was being returned as some of Eliza’s human sympathizers started to realize they were being shot at and that the lead driver had not simply had an accident.

Eliza was close, I could sense the waves of cruelty emanating from her like ripples in a pond. I’m sure I could have followed the signal back to its source, but then she would have known I was here.

We could hear multiple truck doors opening and men scrambling to get into a defensive posture. Boot falls fell no more than five feet from where our heads were. A troop transport truck almost at the edge of my abilities was parked with the engine running; it was full of zombies.

“Anything?” BT asked, gripping his rifle so tightly, I thought he was going to fuse the metal with the wood.

Now it was my turn to sweat. “It’s full of zombies. They’re just sitting in there.”

“They’re very well behaved,” Gary said. Not sure why; it was most likely nerves.

“Mike, these guys are getting close. It’s only going to take one of them to look over and we’re screwed,” BT said.

“Cool, so I wasn’t already feeling enough pressure; that oughta help.” I told BT I was doing my best to not cause a self-induced brain bleeder.

A hastily thrown cigarette butt flew by the left side of Gary’s face. I thought he was going to start coughing from the smoke. Gary, in his entire life had never smoked, not one normal cigarette and not one of those funny, little left-handed ones that I had enjoyed so many of in my youth. Who am I kidding? I still enjoyed them from time to time in these latter years, especially at Widespread Panic shows.

Gary was turning blue in a desperate bid to keep himself from coughing. I grabbed the cigarette and chucked it further down the slope we were standing on.

“Talbot,” BT said, with no small measure of alarm.

We could hear men talking. The gunfire from our band had stopped. They had done their part and left before becoming outmanned and out gunned. Eliza’s men were about to fan out and find whoever had attacked.

I turned my thoughts back to the zombies, who were still waiting patiently in the truck. “Eliza’s got them under her control,” I told the group.

“We gotta go, Mike,” BT said, gripping my shoulder. “We might be able to make it to the tree line before they see us.

“Doubtful,” Gary said.

“Okay, she’s not communicating with them now, or she would have found me meddling about,” I said aloud, but mostly for myself.

“Mike, it’s now or never,” BT said, flipping his safety off, while Gary did the same.

“Okay, so she sent them an order and kind of tied it off. Does that make sense?” I was still only talking to myself. “It’s almost like a repeating message and she just has it on loop.”

“You should maybe pull the plug on that machine,” Gary said as he got himself into a proper shooting position.

“No power cord,” I said, intensifying my concentration. I’m still uncertain as to how this is done though. Can you really think harder? I find just thinking about thinking leads me astray. “More like a rope or a cord.” We were seconds away from capture and/or death or vice versa. My senses were so heightened, I could hear individual pebbles as they were crushed under the boot heels of the troops approaching. “I found the knot!” I said excitedly.

“Weeks! I heard something over by the side of the road!” one of the men said.

“Time to die,” BT said, though whether it was about the man that shouted or for us, he did not clarify.

I felt sort of sorry that the last thing that man saw on this planet was most likely the biggest man he had ever encountered, popping up from the side of the road with a rifle.

“Got it!” I shouted triumphantly just as BT’s rifle shuddered from the gas release of two bullets. Weeks’ friend caught the first round in the side of his neck; blood pumped out as the man tried in vain to staunch the flow.

A small piece of hell broke out that day as BT’s rifle kept jumping from the expended rounds. He was screaming a war cry. I watched in horror, almost matrix-like, as return fire began to pass him by, coming dangerously close. I was convinced I was going to watch my best friend die in slow motion. And then the real fun began. Shouts of alarm, pain and terror began to ring out all around us as “freed” zombies began to pour from the troop transport.

Speeders had come to our aid. As Eliza’s men had begun to coalesce on us, the speeders had attacked from behind. They were relentless as they chewed on anything within reach. Shots fired wildly as the men turned to face their new threat. BT was still screaming and firing. I had to get up from my hiding spot to drag him down. Okay, to be fair, nobody really drags BT anywhere. He sort of let me. Watching people, even the enemy, being eaten is not something to be witnessed.

“Don’t kill them all, BT, or the speeders will be looking for another food source, and I know I can beat you in a footrace,” I told him.

“That’s alright. I know I’m faster than your brother,” he said, smiling.

“That’s not cool, not cool at all,” Gary said. “Can we maybe go now?” he asked as the screams intensified.

We ran parallel to the road, making sure to stay deep in our culvert. Now that I had found Eliza’s string and knew exactly where it was, pulling it open was fairly easy. I was like a kid that had just discovered an unlocked candy store. Sounds incredible at first until you’re elbow-deep in salt water taffy and three pounds of licorice are already inside your stomach, oh! and don’t forget about the dozen or so sugar sticks you’ve already eaten. I was sort of drunk with the power of it, not yet realizing how much more danger I was putting us in. Apparently, Eliza wasn’t fond of the slower-ambling shufflers we’d all come to know and love. She was much more interested in the devastation that could be wrought from their faster, more mobile brethren.

Zombies were dropping out of trucks like blood from a pierced hemophiliac. (Think about that for a second.) Problem was, there were way more zombies than food. Some zombies had been shot or simply ran out of room on the roadway or were simply pushed out of the way began to find themselves in our culvert. Some were far beyond making a go at us, others were not.

“Company,” Gary said, looking over his shoulder. He had run up into my back and almost through it.

“You’d better pick up the pace,” I told BT, turning back to see what Gary was looking at.

“You sure I’m the slowest?” Gary asked, jockeying for position on my side.

“Gary, I’d trip you if you weren’t,” I told him.

He stopped to look at my expression. I’m not sure if he was happy with the answer he divined. He began to push ahead of BT.

“What the hell?” BT said loudly.

I started firing. I was well beyond the point of caring if we were discovered or not. Besides, Eliza’s men were doing all they could to merely survive right now. They were in full scale battle mode, whereas we were just a minor skirmish in comparison.

BT took an immediate left, heading straight for the tree line. The zombies had heard the cacophony and started to come into our ditch, further up, effectively cutting off our escape that way. A quick glance to the left had me wondering which avenue would be better, thorns the size of small rhino horns that glistened wetly, each looking big enough to bleed all of us dry or the zombies. Good thing BT was cutting the path first!

I was vaguely aware some of the trucks were starting up and pulling away. Some of Eliza’s henchmen would survive the day, but most, I felt, had met the end they so well deserved.

I almost fell over BT as he slid down like a baseball player going for a triple on a ball that was, at best, a double. Gary was way ahead of the curve on me on this one. He was on his hands and knees, crawling underneath the worst of the brambles. A zombie stepped on Gary’s ankle in an attempt to get at him, and if not for getting hung up in the stickers, it would have succeeded. The zombie kept trying to power its way through and was only rewarded with more piercings. I got down and began to scramble for all I was worth. The top of my hoodie got snagged on a branch and I was hung up like dirty laundry. A zombie grabbed onto the bottom part of my leg and was coming in for a bite when I screamed for him to STOP!

I turned to look at it and see if I had any effect on him. The intensity of my yell forced blood to pour from its nose. Its eyes glazed over for a fraction of a second and then it just stopped. It didn’t move. I would have liked to maybe kick it in the head four or five hundred times, but I wanted to get out of there quickly. More zombies were coming and I wasn’t sure if I could do the same to them. I snapped off the branch I was affixed to and went deeper into the tangle.

BT had pretty much uprooted the fauna as he went through. You could have driven a Geo Metro through the hole he left. The only problem with his passage was that it left an avenue for the zombies to follow. Once we all made it through the ten or so feet of thorns and into the woods proper, I stopped to get an idea of our pursuit. Zombies were haplessly stuck in the path that Gary and I had forged, but zombies were already halfway through BT’s gap.

“Should have been a little more careful about that,” BT said.

“You think?” I asked him.

Gary killed the first two zombies coming through, sealing the hole for the moment.

Zombies began to fan out. Some would be stuck hopefully forever; others were beginning to find inroads toward us.

“We’ve got to get going,” I said, pretty much needlessly.

“I thought Justin was the one with the flair for the obvious?” BT asked.

“He had to get it from somewhere,” Gary added.

I was going to tell them these rifles would be useless in the dense copse of trees, but refer back to the “obvious” banter. Zombies were already in the woods behind us, and were approaching as rapidly as the vegetation would allow.

“BT, go!” I said, smacking him on the shoulder. “Gary you get behind him. “I’ll try to make them stop.”

The gunfire from the roadway had become sporadic and then had abruptly ended. The food was doing what food was supposed to do, either getting eaten or fleeing. As the menu became slim pickings up top, more and more began to find their way down the embankment and joined in the pursuit of us.

I thought I might have possibly heard a woman scream. Eliza in frustration was my hope, but we were being hunted vigorously and we did not have time to gloat.

“Zombies in front,” BT said breathlessly. His trailblazing was beginning to take its toll. He turned left into somehow thicker foliage.

“This is horseshit,” I said as a third branch smacked off the side of my face. We would be leaving a blood trail Henry could follow. (I’m implying that bulldogs do not make good bloodhounds.)

Gary stopped for a second to take two well aimed shots at zombies that made an angle of approach which would have put them dangerously close to snagging BT.

BT pressed harder; he looked to be hung up. He quickly shucked off his jacket and kept pressing. He popped through a particularly dense bramble to emerge on the other side. But zombies had somehow beaten him to the punch. We were nearly encircled and barely had enough room to pivot around and find open firing lanes.

“Stop BT!” I yelled. “We make our stand here.”

“Not quite the Alamo,” he said with resignation, placing more rounds in his rifle.

“Any chance you can make them go away?” Gary asked, shoving rounds into his magazine.

“Yeah, one at a time and as soon as I move to the next one, the previous one will come back,” I told him.

“Not very effective,” he told me honestly and without malice; he was merely stating his feelings.

“Mike, now would be a most awesome time for one of your last ditch efforts,” BT said between expended rounds.

The noose was tightening quickly around our necks. The sun was nearly at high noon, the preacher had said his final words, the hangman’s hand was on the trip lever and the townsfolk were staring wide-eyed, fearful to blink, lest they miss something.

A zombie flew in from our right, a tree root making it fall at the last moment. It latched on with its teeth to BT’s pants, below his knee. The zombie’s hands scrambled to seek purchase. BT quickly turned the butt of the gun and slammed it into the side of the zombie’s face. The impact dislodged the majority of its teeth from its head. It’s nasal cavity had completely been pushed in from BT’s second head strike. It fell to the ground in a heap of crushed bone and leaking brain.

“That would have been a good one to tell go away,” Gary said to me.

“Thanks for that,” I muttered.

The trees and bushes, which moments earlier were preventing our escape, were now the only thing keeping the zombies from completely overwhelming our meager defense. As much of an impediment as they were to us, they were double that for the zombies, who were nearly oblivious to them as they tried to get at us. I watched as at least two zombies lost an eye when finger-thick branches pressed into their eye sockets. One had popped its left eye completely free from its orbital socket; the other had impaled the branch into her eye, yet neither one of them stopped trying to get to us.

Something niggled in my mind. I placed my hand on Gary’s back. “Stop shooting,” I told him barely above a whisper.

“BT, quiet!” I said a little louder.

A zombie launched at Gary, and as if a pit-bull on a short leash, it wrenched back in mid flight. “That you?” Gary asked, wide-eyed.

I shook my head in the negative, and placed my index finger to my lips.

One zombie, not more than a foot from BT’s face, took one long mournful look at the meal it was foregoing and headed back the way it had come.

“Eliza?” BT asked, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“Tommy,” I said quietly.

“Tomas you mean?” Gary asked, correcting me.

I didn’t know the reason for the name change, if it meant anything at all. It, however, felt right calling the presence in my mind Tommy.

“That was pretty fortuitous,” BT said.

“Almost too much,” I said.

“You think he was helping us?” BT asked.

“It sure seems that way. Let’s get out of here before his big sister figures out what’s going on.”

“Back to the obvious, but I completely agree,” BT said.

It was another twenty minutes until we were finally able to push through the small woods and into the neighborhood beyond. I almost wanted to kiss the pavement when we got to it, but who knows what someone had on their tires when they drove over this spot. I shuddered thinking about my lips coming into contact with whatever it was. It could have been skunk road kill, for all I knew.

“Something wrong?” BT asked. “You’ve gone all pale. You’ve got that look like you just touched a shopping cart without a sani-wipe.”

“Damn BT! How long have you known me?”

“Long enough. Let’s get back to the rest.”

“I’m glad we’re out of the woods, so to speak,” Gary said, “but I hate feeling this exposed.”

Lower income housing dominated our left side; most looking vacated. Some looked like a war zone and others looked expectant, like they were waiting for a savior or a meal. Zombies would be trapped inside some of them, as would regular people, clutched in the vise-like grip of fear. People who would rather starve to death than brave anything on the outside. The meek would not inherit this world. They would die as they had lived, alone and in the shadows. We, the bold, would either die in a blaze of glory or triumph grandly over evil. Can you tell I was feeling slightly magnanimous over our victory? Already forgetting our near disastrous retreat. That’s how I survive. If I remembered every close call, I’d be huddled in a bomb shelter. Thank God for short term memory loss. See? All those years of smoking marijuana did have a higher purpose beyond getting high!

Zombies started coming out from backyards; it was one congealed mass of excrement and blood.

“All the noise must have disturbed a hive,” BT said. “We’ve got to get off the street.”

“See how easy it is to become Captain Obvious?” I told him. He didn’t see the humor, and to be honest, neither did I.

Options were limited. The majority were the deaders, but a fair portion were not. We would have a difficult time outrunning them. I had no desire to go into a house for fear of the inhabitants, whether dead, alive or a state in between.

“Which house looks the best?” BT asked, popping off a few rounds for good measure.

“Any of them have a moat?” I asked.

“Or a gun turret?” Gary asked.

“Right,” BT said. “What more was I really expecting?” he asked himself. He charged for the closest house.

I hoped the damn door was unlocked because if he had to cave it in to gain entry, that meant the zombies would be able to follow us. BT’s flight triggered something in the speeders. They veered off from the main group and began to angle towards him.

“Let’s go, Gary, or we’re going to be cut off!” I yelled to his back. Gary had already figured this problem out and passed me by before I could finish my sentence.

BT, with his rush of adrenaline, ripped the screen door clean off its hinges. I was too scared to even comment on him affecting the resale value. A bullet hole ripped through the front door, and had to have been an eighth of an inch from BT’s head, max. The splintering of wood forced BT to turn away. He looked back towards me, wondering where the shot had come from. I was frantically pointing to the next house. The shot had come from inside; someone did not desire to entertain guests.

BT had already jumped down off the steps when the next shot rang out. As the echo from the shot died down, all that was left was my heavy breathing and the combined heavy footfalls of BT, Gary, me and the zombies that pursued us. The next house had a security screen door, which was locked tight. I didn’t spare it a second thought as I jumped down the stairs, BT had passed me up and was heading for the next house in line. Gary was rapidly falling behind and in extreme danger of being overtaken. I was stuck, I didn’t have enough bullets or the right firing angle to do him much good. My heart lurched as Gary chanced a look over his shoulder and stumbled ever so slightly, giving the zombies more ground.

Gary had a three-foot lead on the closest zombie. BT got into the next house or I would have to go back and tell my father I had lost his son. “God, I could use a little help right now.”

The security screen of the house I had just tried swung open.” Get your ass in here!” A woman screamed at me.

BT was heading to the fifth house when he heard the woman. Gary was running towards me. I swung my head back and forth. Gary might just make it, but no way BT could get back though.

BT saw my dilemma. “Get your ass in there, Talbot! I’ll figure something out!” he shouted, still running.

“Listen!” the woman shouted at me. “I didn’t make it this long to die with my front door open. Either get your ass in here or get eaten on someone else’s lawn!”

I spared one more look at BT, who was on to the next house. “Godspeed, BT,” I said softly before running back up the stairs and inside. The woman didn’t spare me a second glance as she waited for Gary to get there. “He’s not going to make it,” she said, more to herself than to me. “Your friend is not going to make it,” she said, getting ready to pull the door shut.

“He’s my brother,” I told her, placing my rifle against the doorjamb to hold the rifle steady, and more importantly, to keep her from shutting the door too early. I had a shot, but it was a shitty one. There was about a three-inch window between Gary’s head and the closest zombie’s head. As long as Gary didn’t do any bobbing and weaving, I should be fine. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself as I applied slow, steady, even pressure to the trigger. The rifle went off before I was ready. I watched in alarm as a tuft of Gary’s hair blew back from the force of the bullet. His trailing zombie fell, taking with it some of the closer ones in pursuit.

Gary’s hands were still pumping as he fought for more speed. I saw the glistening of red welling up from the side of his head as he hit the bottom step. He jumped, launching past me and the stunned woman, collapsing on her living room floor. Blood pumped from the wound on his head. “I’ve been shot,” he said right before passing out.

The woman slammed the door shut, or at least, tried to as my rifle was still in the way. “How the hell have you made it this long?” she asked as she pulled my barrel in, quickly slamming the door and reengaging the lock.

“I get that a lot,” I told her as she moved me inside so she could shut the heavy steel front door. I admired her security. If I had half this set-up, I would still be in Colorado, riding the apocalypse out in relative style. That was a pipe dream, but a dream nonetheless.

“Josh! Get the first aid kit!” the lady yelled up the stairs.

A kid of about twelve or thirteen came running down, carrying an oversized white case with a large red cross on it.

I expected at any moment for her husband to come down the stairs also. When that didn’t happen immediately, I began to wonder if this lady and her son had opened up their door to strangers. I would remember to ask her later, after she finished making my brother stop bleeding on her carpet.

“There’s a lot of blood, Mom,” Josh told her. “He didn’t get bit, did he?” the boy asked in alarm.

“No, the one over there shot him,” the lady said as she cleaned the wound.

“Why mister? Why did you shoot him?” Josh asked me.

“He’s my brother,” I tried to say in explanation.

“If I had a brother, I wouldn’t shoot him,” Josh told me.

“Wait, no. I didn’t shoot him because he’s my brother. I was trying to save him.”

“By shooting him? Mom, didn’t Uncle Dave tell you not to open the door for the crazy people?” Josh admonished his mother.

The woman looked up at me. “Are you crazy?” she asked, still wiping blood and placing gauze in the wound to staunch the blood.

How did I answer that? More than a fair amount of people, especially recently, had called me crazy. I did the prudent thing, I stayed silent.

“Wonderful,” the woman said sarcastically, wrapping tape around Gary’s head. “Your brother will be fine unless of course you’re not quite through with him yet.”

“Why do I keep running across comedians?” I asked her.

“Come on, put your rifle down and help me get him onto the couch,” she told me.

“What about the zombies?” I asked her, not yet quite willing to yield my only means of defense.

“They can’t get in,” Josh told me. “The only way things can get in here is if we let them in,” he said pointedly looking straight at his mother.

“They needed help,” she told him quickly.

By the time we settled Gary down into the couch, he looked to be more comfortably asleep than anything else.

“He’ll be fine,” she said, sticking out her still bloody appendage. “My name is Mary, Mary Hilop.”

I looked in horror at the proffered hand. “Um, your hand is soaking with blood.”

She pulled it back slightly to look. “There’s like three dots and it’s your brother’s blood anyway.”

“I don’t know where he’s been,” I told her.

“Oh, for Christ’s sakes,” she said, heading into the kitchen and turning on the faucet.

“You’re not worried about contaminated water?” I asked her in all seriousness.

“It’s well water and are you going to make me regret my decision to let you in?”

“My name is Mike Talbot and that’s my brother, Gary,” I told her. “And why did you let us in? You don’t know what kind of people we are.”

She stood for a long time with her hands under the water. (And, I’ll happily admit, she was using liberal amounts of dish soap.) I think she was deciding what she did or did not want to tell me. She finally turned the faucet off and turned to face me. “This morning I was saying my prayers, like I do every day. You know knees on the bedroom floor, hands on top of the bed, and I was just getting up when I heard an answer back.” She looked me straight in the eye, wondering if I was going to think she was nuts.

I didn’t so much as flinch. That was far from the craziest thing that had happened to me, and I’m just talking about today.

When she realized I wasn’t going to try and have her committed, she continued. “The voice said I should help those as I would want them to help me. And when I saw you and the other two running from the zombies out there, I put Josh and myself in your places and thought what would I want someone to do, so I opened the door.”

“That was very brave of you,” I told her, meaning it.

“Did I do the right thing?” she asked me.

“Well, I think so. You saved my brother and my lives.”

“But were you worthy to be saved?” came her next question.

“My brother is,” I told her flatly. She left it at that, and I silently thanked her.

“What of the other man?” she asked.

“BT, his name is BT and he’s quite possibly the best friend I have ever had. We’ve traded saving each other’s lives so many times, I’m not even one hundred percent sure who is in the lead, although I suspect it is me. I have got to go and try and find him.”

“Not for a few days,” Mary said, turning back to the kitchen window. She stood on her tiptoes and pulled the shade to the side. “The zees will stay out here for a few days before they go to wherever they go or some other hapless idiot starts running down the street and then it starts all over again.”

I’m pretty sure she just called me a “hapless idiot.” I’ve been called worse, but it still stung.

“When they first came, they were out there for a couple of months.”

“You never had a breach?”

She turned back to me. “No my ex-husband ended up being a paranoid delusional. He spent more on the security of this house than the actual worth of this place.”

I’m a paranoid delusional, but my house fell in the first few days. What I wouldn’t have done to have talked to her ex beforehand. “Where is Mr. Hilop?”

That was a pretty personal question, and I was still some guy she had just let into her home. I thought she might lie and say sleeping upstairs, but she came out with the truth. “It ended up being his sickness that got the best of him. He was convinced that the zees would be able to get through the back basement window and he went to the hardware store to fix that problem and get some supplies for my son’s hobby, he’d do anything for him. That was three months ago. I’m figuring he’s not coming back, although Josh is still holding out hope.”

“Food isn’t an issue?” I asked.

“You heard the part where I said he was delusional?”

“Gotcha,” I told her. “So you said a couple of days?” I asked, coming up to look through the barred window.

“Yeah, they go somewhere and only come out when someone rings the dinner bell.”

“They go into a stasis,” I said as I quickly pulled the shade back into place. Three zombies were fighting over some sort of scraps and I had no desire to discern what it was. “They all pile up into this giant mass of decayed flesh and stink and sort of hibernate. Our best guess is that food is becoming scarce and this is a way for them to extend their lives, such as they are.”

“They’re cognizant?” Mary asked incredulously. “They have thought beyond hunger?”

“It’s some sort of parasite, so it has a survival instinct, but beyond that…” I shrugged my shoulders.

“How long have you been on the run?” Mary asked.

I got a faraway look in my eyes. “Since the beginning,” I told her.

I know she wanted to press me for more information. She and her son had ridden out the entire storm in the relative safety of this house. Luckily, Gary saved me.

“I can’t see!” he screamed from the living room.

Josh had pulled down all the blackout blinds when the zombies had returned. Besides a few strategically placed emergency candles, the house was as dark as the inside of a coffin.

“You’re fine, Gary,” I said. “Shit!” I yelled as I slammed my shin into a table leg.

“Mike? Mike? Is that you? It’s so cold and dark where I am. I can’t see you, brother. I’ve been shot in the head and I think it’s the end for me. Mom, is that you?”

“No, my name is Mary,” Mary said, getting to his side quicker than I could. Being familiar with the house, she was able to navigate through it more rapidly.

“Mary? Such a beautiful name. Are you my guiding angel?” Gary said dramatically, maybe a little too much.

Mary produced a small flashlight and checked Gary’s wound and his pupils, then turned to me. “Does he have a flare for the dramatic?”

“You tell me,” I replied.

“You know that your wound is not much more than a scratch, right?” she asked Gary.

“Are you sure? Because I see the light,” Gary said.

“It’s a Ray-O-Vac penlight,” Mary told him.

“Oh,” Gary said, sitting up. “Then I’m fine. Mike, you know I’m going to have to tell Dad that you shot me.”

“I figured as much. Good to see you vertical, my brother.”

“Are we in a safe house?” he asked.

I nodded my answer. For someone who a second ago couldn’t see anything, he did have a fast response.

“What about BT and the rest?” he asked, getting more comfortable.

“Josh, could you please get me some water and aspirins?” Mary asked her son.

Josh had been at the far end of the room, almost completely obscured in the shadows. I thought I may have detected the glint of a weapon. I couldn’t fault him that. In fact, it was quite the opposite, I thought it was admirable that he remained vigilant over us, protecting his mother and his homestead.

“I don’t know about any of them. BT was too far down the street to turn and make it back. And I haven’t heard anything from the rest.”

“The rest?” Mary asked as she gave the glass of water and tablets to Gary.

The ham made a great show of effort in reaching out to get the meds.

“We were with another three people besides the big man you saw.”

“What were you doing?” Mary asked, helping Gary more when she realized he was having a difficult time. He was completely soaking it up. Even Josh from across the room could tell he was over-exaggerating. The only one who was missing it was Mary.

“Payback,” I told her vaguely.

“Against who? The zombies? But you just said they don’t really have any feelings beyond survival,” Mary said as she checked Gary’s forehead for a temperature. “You feel a little warm.”

“Yes, I do,” Gary said as he slouched in his seat like that was now the most difficult thing in the world, sitting up straight.

“Oh, you poor baby,” I told Gary. “I hope you’re going to be alright.”

“He’s been shot in the head!” Mary shot back at me vehemently. “And you did it! Maybe you should be a little nicer to your brother!”

Gary was smiling over Mary’s shoulder at me; I could tell by the flash of his white teeth. “Yeah nicer,” Gary said weakly, slouching even further into the couch cushion.

“I’ve got to find BT,” I told Mary.

“Unless you’ve got a machinegun on you somewhere, you’re not going to get past the zees,” Josh said.

“Any chance you got one?” I asked.

“Even if I did, mister, I wouldn’t be giving it to you,” he told me.

“Fair enough. Do you have anything you could spare?” I asked.

Mary was shaking her head from side to side. “Greg took his rifle and a pistol with him when he went. The only reason he left behind the pistol Josh has is because he had no bullets for it.”

“Mom!” Josh said hotly. “Why would you tell them that?!” he said, storming out of the room.

“I don’t think he’s yet convinced about your intentions. You’ll have to forgive him. He has a lot of Greg in him.”

“That’s probably a good thing these days,” I told her.

“Didn’t help Greg out much,” she said.

“But you two are safe,” I told her. There was an awkward silence as Mary thought that through. Gary saved the day with a soft moan.

“Oh, you poor baby,” Mary said, stroking the side of his face.

“My ass,” I said.

“What was that?” Gary asked with strain in his voice.

“Mary, do you mind if I walk around the house, looking for a way around the zombies?”

”You won’t, but feel free.”

“Thank you,” I told her.

She had already forgotten I was still in the room as she turned back to Gary’s ministrations.

I did a complete circuit of the house. In typical zombie fashion, we were surrounded. It wasn’t thousands, maybe a hundred or so. My OCD half thought about counting, but the asses wouldn’t stay still long enough for me to get an accurate tally. One would go, two would come, a few would just run endless circles around the house until I started to recognize them and I had counted them more than once. With two full clips, I might be able to cut a path through, but then what? Most of these zombies were speeders and I was no track star.

I walked up the stairs to see how disappointed I could get with an aerial view. I had just pulled the shade to the side when Josh spoke.

“I’ve kept her safe all this time while we’ve been waiting for my dad to come home.”

I don’t know what stopped me… Divine intervention? A brain? My conscience? I don’t know, but I had just about turned and said “You know he’s not coming home, right?” If Tracy had been here, she would have smacked me just for thinking it; and somehow she would have been able to tell. I was stuck. I had been so intent on flat out telling him the truth, I couldn’t think of a viable alternative. I came out with the lame, “That’s nice.”

He gave me a look I’d become all too familiar with seeing.

“How long are you going to stay?” he asked. I’m not sure if it was because he wanted us gone, or it took the burden of protecting his mother off his shoulders.

“Just long enough until there’s a way through the zombies and I can get back to my friends.”

“What about your brother? He’s going to need time to heal.”

“Him? He’s faking.”

“I thought so. He’s not a very good actor.”

I laughed. “Your mom is buying it.”

He stopped to think about that for a minute. “That’s alright; it gives her a chance to stop worrying about me.”

“You’re a smart kid.” He was probably on to something. Mary, on some level, probably knew Gary was hamming it up, but it was a diversion from the nightmare outside.

“Yeah, I usually like to build radio-controlled cars, but guarding this house is a full time job,” he sighed heavily.

“Can I see them?” I asked. We’ve all established that I’m just a larger version of a kid so I wanted to see them; and the word “diversion” was now stuck in my head.

The kid’s room was crammed with at least a dozen different vehicles that I could see. There was a lunar module with six wheels, a tank, that fired projectiles, some racing cars and other sets that were in various states of repair or disrepair.

“I’m still working on this one,” Josh said, picking up what looked like a waste basket on wheels. “My dad went out to get me some parts for this. He had come over to work on it with me and then the zombies had come.”

“What’s it going to be?”

“A half scale R2D2.”

“No way? That’s awesome. You have some incredible stuff here.”

Josh sat down heavily on his bed. “I haven’t touched any of them since he left. He didn’t come back and he was out getting stuff for me.”

Man I hate the serious talks. I sat down next to him. “Listen Josh, I’m a father too.”

He looked up at me with “Really?” written all over his face.

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my kids, from giving up my life all the way to seeing a smile flash across their lips. You’re dad went out, trying to do just that. You can’t blame yourself for his actions, it was something he wanted to do.”

“Thanks mister, you seem like you’d make a good dad.”

“Thanks kid, now if you could just tell my wife that, I’d really appreciate it. Can you show me how a few of these work?”

Josh’s face lit up. He was back in his element, tinkering with the small machines. We spent a few hours going through his wheeled assembly. It was nice to forget for a while what lingered mere feet away outside.

Mary finally had to come up and get us for dinner. Her first two shouts had fallen on deaf ears as we recreated the chase scene from Mad Max.

Mary had made us a simple meal of beef stew and corn, but it was warm and we were safe. I said a silent prayer for my family and friends before I sat down. I noticed only two settings at the table. One for Josh and one for me. “I’m sorry we’re late. Did you guys already eat?” I asked from the kitchen.

“No,” Mary said. “Your brother is still in a lot of pain, so I set up a tray for him out here and then it didn’t seem quite right that he had to eat alone, so I’m staying with him.”

Josh rolled his eyes as he sat down. I snorted out a laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Mary asked a little peevishly.

“Ah nothing,” I said, trying to stall for a more acceptable answer. “Josh had just told me a funny joke before we came downstairs.”

“Josh, it had better not be that one you heard at school!” Mary yelled from the living room.

Thanks, Josh mouthed.

“Better you than me,” I said quietly.

“What are you two whispering about in there?” Gary moaned. “The noise is hurting me.”

“You two stop it or I’ll make you eat upstairs!” Mary yelled.

Funny, Gary didn’t seem to complain about her volume and she was right next to him. And actually, going back upstairs sounded like fun. Josh’s myriad of radio-controlled vehicles was a good diversion from the cold hard truth. “Diversion.” There it was again. The word kept popping up in my head inadvertently; maybe I should actually pay it some heed. I was three spoonfuls into my stew when I looked over to the wastebasket. Gary’s blood-soaked shirt and a bunch of bandages dominated what I could see.

“Hey Josh, can your cars go faster than a person?”

“Yeah, why? You want to race? Because I will SO kick your ass.” He said the last word softly so his mom wouldn’t hear. But she was entirely too busy cooing over my malingering brother to know anything about what we were doing.

“What’s the range on the transmitter?” I asked him, an idea beginning to formulate in my head.

“If you’re talking inside, it would be the whole house.”

“What about outside?”

“A football field, I guess. I don’t usually let them get out of sight though.”

“Do you have one you wouldn’t mind not seeing again?”

“No,” he answered quickly and decisively. “Why?” he asked hesitantly.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said, my gaze still focused on the trash.

“Oh kid, don’t listen to any of his plans,” Gary said. He was leaning up against the entrance to the kitchen, Mary was helping him stay propped up.

“I told him not to get up,” Mary said, exasperated. “But he just wouldn’t listen. He’s a stubborn one.”

I noticed that her eyes seemed to shine a bit as she talked. Looks like someone has a crush and someone else is eating it up in a big way. I was about to give him silent kudos until he spoke.

“I had Mary help me get up because when I heard how quiet you two were in here, I knew it meant you were thinking about something. You have to be careful, Josh, my brother’s ‘plans’ usually don’t work out so well.”

“Don’t you have an injury you can go ham up?” I asked him.

“You shot him in the head!” Mary exclaimed.

“It’s alright, Mary,” Gary said calmly. “Now do you see what I’ve had to put up with?”

“You poor baby. Here, let me help get you back to the couch, or would you be more comfortable in a bed? I’m sure Josh will give you his.”

“Mom!” Josh yelled.

“The couch is fine,” Gary moaned.

“Oh brother,” I said as both a euphemism and a commentary on his acting skills.

“But I’d love to hear Mike’s plan before I do,” Gary said, smiling to me when Mary turned to scowl at me for delaying his return to a horizontal position.

“Mom, Gary is smiling,” Josh said, pointing over his mom’s shoulder.

“It’s a grimace,” Gary said as Mary turned back to face him.

Mary turned back to hear me out and Gary took his index and middle finger and pointed at his eyes, then at Josh as if to tell him, I’ve got my eyes on you.

“Mom?!” Josh wailed.

“That’s enough, young man, I want to hear what Gary’s brother has to say.”

At least, I knew where I was on the pecking order. “I’ve got to find my friend,” I started. Mary was about to protest. “I know there’s no way out right now, but I can’t wait two or three days until they clear out. He might need our…”

“Gary’s not going anywhere in this condition!” Mary stated with a tone that said it was not open for discussion.

“Okay, my help.” I clarified, Mary nodded in ascension. “I would like Josh.” I knew I was treading on thin ice here. She would kick me out in a heartbeat if she thought I was putting her son even remotely in danger. I figured it best to continue my dialog and quickly. “With Josh’s permission, of course.” Mary’s stance was telling me that whatever hare-brained scheme I was coming up with, it wasn’t Josh’s decision to make. “No, nothing like that,” I said, putting my hands up. “I don’t need Josh.”

The kid instantly looked like he deflated.

Mary appeared a little heartbroken at the sight of her son.

“See? What did I tell you about his ‘plans?’” Gary said.

“Wait a second. I need Josh, but not in any way that exposes him to the zombies. I need his skills and a radio-controlled car, if he’ll do it.”

Go on, Mary motioned with her hand.

I laid the rest of it out there. Josh was immediately on board; he seemed actually pretty excited about it. Mary took a few minutes longer, trying to think of any way in which this exposed her son to anything close to danger, but she finally placed her stamp of approval on it.

“I’m going with you,” Gary said.

“In your condition?” I asked him. “I think not.”

Mary nodded with my words.

“You made your bed, brother, now you need to lie in it,” I said cryptically.

I pushed away from the table, placing my dishes in the sink. I thanked Mary for the meal. I would have normally waited for the morning to launch my ingenious idea, but the moon was nearly full and there were no clouds. It was a fairly bright night and I wanted to get BT back into the fold as soon as possible. The big guy was probably scared to death without me.

Gary found me about an hour later. I was in a small sitting room on the south side of the house. I was alternating between staring out the window at the zombies that periodically walked by, and stretching out my muscles for the endeavor they were about to undertake.

“You sure about this, brother?” he asked me.

“Of course not,” I told him.

“I’m serious,” he said.

“So am I,” I answered.

“What about back-up?” he asked.

“I appreciate it, Gary, I really do. Listen I’m no track star and that goes double for you. I won’t get to BT if I’m looking back for you.” Gary looked down. “And hey, if something happens to me, would this be the worst place in the world to wrap up the remainder of your days?”

“You’ve always been like a younger brother to me,” Gary said.

“Kiss my ass,” I told him.

“You be careful.”

“I will, I always am.”

Gary snorted. “Now I know you’re lying, because you’re insulting my intelligence.”

“Go find Mary; maybe she has some tea that can help you with that.”

Gary left and I was once again alone with my thoughts. I finished stretching quickly because no one should be exposed to my thoughts for too long.

I was as ready as I was ever going to be when I came out of that room. My head, however, was still clouded with doubt for what I was about to do. Why did everything always seem like a good idea right up until launch time? Then it seemed just about the craziest thing ever.

“Mom? Any words of wisdom?” I asked, looking to the heavens.

I could picture her saying, “What the hell are you thinking?” What response would I have to that? Thinking had never been my forte. There were a multitude of reasons why I did not build rockets when the world was slightly more normal.

“The car won’t flip?” I asked Josh.

He looked at me like I should leave that up to the pros.

“What are you eating?” I asked, looking at his sandwich. It smelled really good, but it looked like warmed-over vomit.

“A peanut butter and maple oatmeal sandwich,” he said between big bites. He was busy adjusting something on the chassis.

“Oatmeal?” I asked. Josh never looked up.

“He loves it,” Mary said, shrugging her shoulders.

“So this won’t flip?” I asked again, not wanting to look at his train wreck of a sandwich anymore.

Oatmeal leaked from the sides of the bread as he stared up at me. “Have you been listening to me at all?” he asked testily.

“His wife says that a lot,” Gary said from the couch.

I turned to flip him the finger, but Mary was boring holes in me, so I thought better of the gesture. It ended up being a half-hearted wave, which he returned eagerly.

“It can’t flip over because there is no top or bottom. I designed it that way so if it went over a bump and flipped over it would never get stuck.”

“That’s awesome,” I said, picking up his engineering marvel which was basically just four oversized tires attached to a chassis. “Have you ever gotten it stuck?” I asked, turning the machine over. He didn’t immediately answer, and I moved the machine so I could get a better look at the boy. “Josh?”

“Well not stuck, really,” he hemmed and hawed.

“Feel free to keep going,” I urged.

“Well, I’ve had some problems with this wheel,” he said, grabbing what was at this moment the front left, but at some point could be the front right, back left and/or back right. Yeah, it didn’t make much sense to me at the time either. In my world, front was front, rear was rear.

“Um, so what kind of problems?” My idea’s value was beginning to plummet.

“You really shouldn’t badger the kid,” Gary said.

“Badger the kid? Hey I know I get accused of not thinking before I speak all the time, but this isn’t our entry into the county fair where the worst that can happen is a last place finish.”

“Honey, what’s wrong with your car?” Mary asked him.

Josh took an extra squishy bite of his sandwich, and sticky oatmeal plopped to the floor. I would imagine this was a stalling technique. I’d employed that method many times myself with varying degrees of results. He gulped down his bite. “Sometimes this wheel gets stuck,” he said, looking up at my eyes and then his mother’s.

“How often does it get stuck?” I asked.

“More than it used to.”

Not much of an answer, I thought as I ran my hands through my hair in the traditional “I’m screwed” way.

“Mike, you can’t still be thinking of doing this?” Gary asked, rising up from the couch.

“I don’t have a good feeling about BT, Gary. I can’t explain it, but I really think he needs my help.”

Gary looked at me funny. “BT needs your help?” He finally came out, asking the obvious question. “Are you sure this isn’t just your over-active imagination or your senseless need to put yourself in danger or is it just a way to commit suicide by zombie?!” Gary said heatedly.

“Well, don’t hold back, brother! Tell me what you’re really thinking.”

“You’re upsetting him!” Mary came to Gary’s defense.

I didn’t see it that way, looked way more like he was doing the disturbing.

“Mike, ever since we left Maine, you have done everything in your power to put us in as much danger as possible. It seems like you go out of your way to find the worst situation, then you head right for it, like you just can’t wait to see a new and unusual way to die.”

“I don’t remember forcing you to leave Maine, Gary,” I said forcefully.

“Someone had to watch your back,” he said, advancing a step on me.

“You do realize, Gary, that we are in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, right? And that we are no longer on the top of the food chain. Going out for smokes can now be a life or death situation.”

“You know I don’t smoke and neither do you, but you’d probably pick up the habit just to see if you could get them.”

Gary was pretty worked up. I hadn’t seen him this angry since they cancelled Battle of the Network Stars sometime back in the late seventies. “Gary, I’m not doing this out of some ill-conceived way to commit suicide. My family, my friends are in trouble, I could never, I would never leave them, or their fates up to the whim of a crazy bitch vampire.”

“No swearing in my house,” Mary said loudly. Then she stopped to look at me when she processed the rest of the sentence. “Crazy bitch vampire?”

“Mom, no swearing,” Josh echoed his mother in a much-practiced routine.

“Like Dracula vampires?” Mary asked hesitantly.

“Worse,” Gary said, still with heat in his voice.

“What? He’s not joking?” Mary asked as she sat down heavily, nearly missing the edge of the couch. Gary caught her under her armpit to keep her from hitting the ground.

“Her name’s Eliza and she’s got this thing for Mike,” Gary said as Mary settled deeper into the couch, trying to hide herself from the advancing shadows in her mind.

“And you came into my house!” Mary shouted, rising quickly from her perch. “How dare you!” she said, shaking with rage.

“You opened the door to us,” I told her.

“I wouldn’t have; had I known!” she shouted.

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t have the time to give you our bio when we were trying to save our lives,” I told her.

“Cool, you know a vampire?” Josh asked, surprised.

“It’s not nearly as cool as you might think,” I told him.

“Does she sparkle?” he asked.

“Why would she sparkle?” I asked Josh. I was clearly confused.

“You wouldn’t understand the reference,” Gary interjected, with no further explanation.

“Can we forget about all this sparkly shit!” Mary shouted.

“Mom!” Josh yelled.

“Sorry, Josh. Mommy’s a little stressed-out right now. Where is this vampire now?” Mary asked, swinging back and forth between Gary and myself, searching for a truthful answer.

“Well, I mean she could be anywhere by now,” Gary said.

“Where was she the last time you saw her?” Mary asked, trying to extract the information like a stubborn, impacted tooth.

“Well, what’s your definition of ‘saw’?” I asked her, trying to get the heat off Gary.

“I swear, I’ll throw you both out right now if I don’t get a straight answer!”

“What about my head wound?” Gary asked with alarm.

“Oh for Christ’s sakes! I’ve cut myself worse shaving my legs!” Mary shouted.

“Eww gross, Mom! Why would you shave your legs?” Josh asked, clearly turning the shade of green I had when I saw him eating his sandwich earlier.

“I’ll bet your legs don’t bleed as much as my head,” Gary said as he absently touched his wound.

“I’ll ask you one more time, Mike, and then you and your brother will be hitting the streets,” Mary said seriously. “Whether or not you ‘saw’ (in finger quotes) this Eliza, where was her last known spot?”

“I-95,” I told her.

“I-95 goes up the entire eastern coast. Could you please be a little more specific?” Mary said, heading towards the front door.

“Well, if you were to open that door you’re heading for and look across the street, past the small copse of woods, you would basically run into her last known whereabouts,” I told her.

I could tell that opening the door had suddenly lost some of its luster. Zombies were a nightmare, which many people had not been able to wrap their minds around and had paid the ultimate price for that disconnect. Vampires, well basically the same path, but you had to go a lot deeper into the woods, so to speak.

“Did Mike tell you he was a half-vamp?” Gary said, still fingering the bandages.

“What?” Mary said, almost falling over herself to get away from me.

“You’re not helping, Gary. How hard did that bullet hit?”

“Way cool!” Josh said, coming to get a better look at the circus attraction.

“Stay away from him!” Mary shouted, but I didn’t know if she was talking to him or me.

“Do you drink blood?” Josh asked excitedly. He may have heeded his mother’s words and stopped his advance, but his curiosity was unbridled.

“No, but I’ve got this thing for Pop-Tarts now,” I told him honestly.

“He has a psychic link to Eliza,” Gary added absently.

I thought Mary was going to faint. “Gary, feel free to shut the hell up whenever you want,” I told him.

“What? She has a right to know.”

“Does your friend out there turn into like Big Foot or something?” Josh asked. “I mean because I saw him running down the street and he was HUGE!” Josh said, spreading his hands as far apart as he could.

“No, but that would be cool,” I told Josh.

“Yeah, it really would be,” he agreed, nodding as he answered.

“Does she know you’re here?” Mary asked cautiously. She kept eyeing the door anxiously as if she expected her to bust through at any moment.

“No,” I answered.

“How can you be so sure?” Mary asked.

“Things would be way worse,” Gary said. “I really only have a scratch?” he asked her.

“Oh, honey,” Mary said reverting back to her caregiver status. “But it really is a nasty looking scratch.”

I don’t know if she was a trooper and had assimilated the information and was dealing with it or she just chose to push it down deeper into her psyche. Not my call, but whatever gets you through the day can’t be all bad.

“Can we still go on with the plan?” I asked Mary. She seemed to have lost herself in Gary’s wound. “I’ll take that as a yes,” I said to Josh.

“I would,” he agreed with me.

“You think it’s better to drag this behind rather than tie it to the top?” I asked Josh for maybe the third time.

“Even for an adult, you don’t listen well,” he admonished me. “I’ll tell you once again, this car has no top or bottom to tie anything onto. If it were to flip, it would get stuck on the clothes, like a turtle.”

“That makes sense,” I told him.

“That’s what you said the first two times I told you,” he said.

“Hey, cut me some slack, kid, I’m the one running with the zombies. I’m a little nervous.”

“I guess I would be too,” he answered, thinking about it.

“Gary, I know you’re head is probably still aching, and you might be woozy and everything, but do you think you could lay down some covering fire if I were to say, trip over something?”

Gary was fighting back a comment. I could see the machinations behind his eyes working frantically, but apparently higher reasoning or a higher purpose took over. “I don’t think this is a good idea, Mike, but I’ll always have your back,” he said, getting up, even with Mary’s disapproving stare.

I nodded my thanks to him. I stuffed Gary’s bandages and bloody shirt into a laundry bag, secured the top and then tied a nylon rope from the neck of the bag to a strut on Josh’s car.

I opened a window and immediately regretted my decision. The smell that assailed us was hideous, the sour stench of death. Josh hurled his peanut butter and oatmeal sandwich. It looked pretty much the same coming up as it had going down. I would not be adding that to my list of foods to try.

“You going to be alright?” I asked him as I lowered the car by the laundry bag rope to the ground.

I could hear Gary gagging in the background; Josh started back up. “Great,” I muttered, “dueling gaggers.” My support system was not looking up to task.

Mary saved the day. “You two are going to ruin my carpet!” she yelled, getting up to clean Josh’s internal spillings.

A zombie startled the crap out of me as he smacked into the bars. It had come dangerously close to stepping on the car. More zombies were coming to investigate the din and they weren’t generally too concerned with foot placement.

“Josh, you have to get that car out of here, or they’re gonna bust it,” I said. That seemed to get him. The smell was one thing, but losing one of his remote-controlled cars was another.

The zombie was eyeing us hungrily (pun intended). It was tough to say if intelligence burned behind its opaque eyes, but this was no clodhopping brain chaser either. Josh gulped loudly as he looked straight at the zombie.

“Umm, I have to get closer to the window so I can see the car,” Josh told me as he turned his large remote on.

“Cover your ears,” I told him.

Mary was coming back from the kitchen with her cleaning supplies. “Don’t you dare!” she screamed just as the report from my rifle rang out.

“COOL!” Josh yelled, taking his hands away from around his ears.

The zombie had fallen mostly straight back, but its left arm was resting on top of the car.

“No shooting in the house!” Mary yelled.

“I’ll keep that in mind, the next time,” I told her honestly. Zombies were within a couple of feet of the window. “Josh, now or never, buddy.”

I’ll give him credit. He mustered up all his courage and stepped up to the window. And then nothing, I saw him moving buttons back and forth and side to side and we could hear the car trying to do something, but the zombie had it pinned.

“I think I can get it free,” Josh said excitedly, up until the point a zombie woman cracked it in half. Josh looked more crushed than the car that was now getting ground into the dirt.

I quickly undid the knot on the small laundry bag and shut the window, drawing the shades and pulling the curtains shut.

“Well, that didn’t work,” I said, going into the kitchen, I sat down heavily in a chair.

“Josh, honey, are you alright?” Mary said, putting her cleaning supplies down to grab her son in a bear hug.

Josh wept a little, but he tried his best to hide it from us all.

“It was a gift from his father,” Mary said over his head to me.

I can’t even begin to convey how big of an ass I felt at this point. If you’ve read all of my journals, you know I have a penchant for saying or doing the wrong thing at the ultimate wrong time, but this one? This one took the cake.

“What…what am I going to do if…if Da…Dad comes home with the parts for it now?” Josh sobbed into his mother’s arms.

“Josh, he’d understand. You were trying to do something good for someone else; you guys would rebuild it, that’s all, honey,” Mary said. She seemed to have correctly punched all the right buttons. Josh pulled back from her arms, wiping his tears away.

“I’ve got another car, Mr. Talbot, if you want to try again, that is,” he said to me.

“I would, Josh. My friend is out there and I’d like to find him.”

“I understand because if I knew where my dad was, I’d try to find him too,” Josh said, wiping his nose and extricating himself from Mary’s arms. “I’ll be right back,” he said, heading back upstairs.

Mary let out a half sob, half gasp. “I’m watching him grow up right before my eyes. Sometimes, he’ll always be my sweet six-year-old, and then sometimes like now, I can see the man that he is becoming.”

Gary finished cleaning up the carpet as Josh rummaged around in his room.

Josh came down the stairs with what looked like the monster truck version of a radio-controlled vehicle.

“Oh, honey are you sure?” Mary asked, placing her hand to her chest. “That was a Christmas present.”

“Mom, Hugo is the best chance Mr. Talbot has of getting to his friend.”

I gathered that Hugo was the name of the truck. “Josh, I don’t know how this is going to turn out.”

“He never does,” Gary added for good measure, coming back from the kitchen.

“I thought the peanut gallery was closed?” I said hotly.

“Boys,” Mary said, playing referee.

“It’s alright, Mr. Talbot. Maybe if you find your friend, then you could go and maybe find my dad.”

I looked over at Mary. I would be lying if I said anything but the truth of where I thought his father was.

“I know that look,” Josh said. “You don’t think my dad is alive. But he has to be! He wouldn’t have just left us, not now.”

“Josh, I will promise you this, if I can get to my friend and get back, I will go check out where you think your dad went.”

“Electronix Emporium,” Josh said quickly, now beaming. “No fooling? You’ll go check?”

“He’s a lot of things and many of them not good, Josh, but a liar isn’t one of them,” Gary said.

“Gotta love a good, back-handed compliment,” I told my brother.

He nodded his head in appreciation.

We moved to a different window on the same side of the house, one where we hoped there would be less zombies. We were right, but then we encountered our next situation - Hugo would not fit through the bars.

“It’s almost like it wasn’t meant to happen,” Gary said. “Like a sign, a bunch of signs.”

“Since when did you become a fortune teller?” I asked him sarcastically.

“Since my fortune got tied up in yours,” he answered quickly.

“As good a time as any, I suppose,” I told him.

“It’s only going to fit out the door,” Josh said, slamming the window down before we attracted any more visitors.

“I’d rather not open any doors,” Mary said.

“How were you planning on letting me out?” I asked.

“Hadn’t thought that far,” Mary said, as realization dawned on her that she really hadn’t gotten that far.

“See what happens when you’re around him for too long?” Gary asked sympathetically.

“Is that like his vampire psychic powers warping our mortal minds?” Josh asked expectantly.

“No, he’s always had this effect on people,” Gary said dryly.

Josh looked a little bummed that it wasn’t a supernatural cause that made those around me go crazy.

“Back door for the car, front door for me?” I asked the household.

“No,” Mary said without hesitation. “I will not have both of my doors opened simultaneously. You don’t even know if this will work. We put the car out, Josh sends it on its way and we see if they follow.”

I didn’t like the plan. At absolute best, the car had a hundred-yard range with Josh’s controller and then it would just stop. I needed a bunch of zombies to go and check this thing out and in a relatively small amount of time before the car hit its max threshold for signal-catching. I should have given the kid way more credit. He had a trick or two up his sleeve to give me the time I needed.

“How we looking?” I asked Gary and Josh, who were peeking out a window adjacent to the door.

“There’s a few milling around, but if you don’t stop to wash your hands or anything, you should be fine,” Gary said.

“You’re on fire tonight,” I told him.

He grinned back.

“You ready, Josh?” I asked.

He spun the wheels on the truck I was holding in response. The torque and the shock almost made me drop the thing. This time, I had secured the small bag of bait on the top of the car, careful to make sure that nothing hung down that could get hooked up in the wheels.

“This sucks,” I said right before pulling the door open. Zombie heads swiveled to the noise, food recognition dawning on their eyes as they began to forge ahead. I started to fumble with the security door, which was, I guess, out of my skill set because I couldn’t get the damn thing open. Mary rushed to my aid, undoing the lock and pushing the door open. I looked at her in gratitude.

“Put the damn car down!” she shouted at me, never taking her eyes off the advancing horde.

Josh already had the wheels turning as I placed it on the ground. The car shot from my hand as it made contact with the hard surface. A zombie slammed the door into my hand. I was sure I felt a couple of bones shatter as Mary wrenched me on my back, pulling me in. She quickly locked the screen door, and I scrambled out of the way as she hurriedly shut the front door.

My hand was already turning that bluish shade of pain and internal bleeding.

“You righty or lefty?” Mary asked, holding my hand.

“Righty,” I told her, “but I shoot leftie.”

Her face sank a little as she held my rapidly swelling left hand.

“I’ll be fine,” I told her. “I have wonderful recuperative powers.”

She looked at me funny; I did not feel the need to elaborate.

“Mike, your hand is broken,” she said, pushing her finger into the bluest part as if to prove her point.

“Yup,” I winced.

“Hey, they’re following it!” Josh stated exuberantly.

I figured I only had seconds before the car had traveled its furthest radio-receiving distance and then they’d turn their attention back to me.

“Wish me luck,” I said as I once again opened the front door. Hand Slammer was gone this time and I had, at least, learned something from Mary as I got the security door opened much more easily. I looked immediately to my right, expecting to see Hugo rapidly approaching maximum distance. All I saw were zombies who were heading towards the side of the house. I ducked my head back in, Josh and Gary had shifted to another window. The kid was brilliant. Instead of just taking the car and heading for maximum distance, he was dodging and weaving it through the zombies, thereby giving me way more time to get the hell out of here.

“Go,” Mary said, her eyes wide with fear. Partly because I had the front door to her house open and partly because I wasn’t moving yet.

I jumped down the three steps and started running in the direction I had last seen BT heading. As soon as I hit my stride, I began to doubt the validity of my entire plan. I’m all for “alone time” and the need for it, but somehow during a zombie-pocalypse doesn’t seem like the right time. Should I shout? There weren’t tons of zombies out, but I also didn’t want to change that status. By my reckoning, one zombie is one too many.

I skipped Mary’s neighbor’s house, and as I approached the next, I began to wonder if BT had maybe traveled through a backyard or two and maybe got on to another street. I mean, what then? He knew where we were, but I had no clue where he was. Why don’t I think this shit out before I act?

I could hear Josh’s car off in the distance, but for some reason, that distance was getting closer.

Chapter Eleven - Ron’s

Travis had pulled up a recliner and fallen asleep by Ron’s shortwave radio. Tracy put down her cup of coffee to drape a small blanket around her son.

“You should get some sleep too,” Ron said, coming into the room.

Tracy grabbed her mug of coffee and walked to the other end of the room so as to not disturb her son.

“They should have called in by now,” she said, staring out the large picture window at the pond, which was just beginning to reflect the morning light.

Ron was all ready to pull out the standard responses. Maybe the radio is broken (likely possibility, knowing his brother’s penchant for breaking things), or maybe the batteries have died (possible, but not probable; Ron gave them enough batteries to last a year even if Mike had left the damn thing on all day, every day), or they were making such good time, they didn’t think to let anyone else know (also another possibility, considering Mike’s what-me-worry? attitude). But he was not so selfish as to not let his loved ones know what was happening. Ron didn’t even go with the standard, “Everything will be alright.” The lie died on his lips before he could even say it.

Ron sat down at the living room table, looking at the same view as Tracy, occasionally remembering to drink his rapidly cooling coffee.

“Anything?” Travis asked, looking over at his mother and uncle.

A small terse shake of Tracy’s head was all the answer he needed.

“Any more of that?” A stretching and yawning Cindy asked.

Tracy was pretty sure Cindy and Travis had arm wrestled for the right to sleep in the chair by the radio the night before. Cindy looked like she may have paced the entire night away.

“I’ll go get you some,” Ron said as he got up to head into the kitchen.

“He…they have to be alright,” Cindy said, hugging herself.

“How’s Perla doing?” Tracy asked, wanting to avoid that conversation completely.

“Someday she’ll be alright, but not today.” Cindy answered, now realizing that maybe she didn’t want to dwell on the fate of her fiancée just yet either. “The view is beautiful,” Cindy told Ron as he handed her a cup of coffee.

“Thank you,” Ron said. “If you guys need anything, please let me know. I’d like to get to work as soon as possible before it gets dark.” Work involved designing, and building all viable means of defense of the Talbot stronghold. Ron wasn’t a betting man, but he was fairly certain Mike would be back and he would be coming in hot. Meaning every zombie and vampire for a thousand mile radius would be in chase. That was Mike; he never got himself halfway into trouble, he always made sure to be fully wedged tightly in its grip, and he planned on being as properly prepared as possible.

“Hi Perla.” Cindy said as she wrapped her arms around her friend.

“Anything?” Perla asked.

Only the resulting silence answered her.

“I’m going to help Uncle Ron,” Travis said, removing the small blanket.

“Be careful, hon. Your dad used to tell me all sorts of horror stories about your uncle and that machine he’s using.”

“The back hoe?” Travis asked.

“Yeah, that thing. Just be careful.”

Travis looked like he wanted to tell his mother that there were way worse things to be afraid of. But now that he thought about it, being around his uncle using a fifteen-ton machine had its own inherent dangers.

***

Ron was fueling the machine and getting ready to check the hydraulics when Travis came out to the garage to meet him.

“You need any help?” Travis asked.

Ron actually preferred to work alone because he didn’t have the greatest track record running the big machine. There were enough houses with their siding missing to attest to that. But he could tell his nephew needed to keep busy doing something.

“Sure, I can’t get into the tree line with this beast and I need some holes dug about yay big,” Ron said, roughly showing a box about a foot deep by a foot across.

“What are they for?”

“Explosives.”

“Sweet,” Travis said as he went over to the wall and grabbed a pick and a shovel off the peg board. “I should have stayed with them,” Travis said to his uncle, his back still to him.

“They’re just late calling in. You don’t know if anything is wrong,” Ron answered his nephew. It sounded flat even as he said it.

“I’m faster than any of them, I’m as good a shot as my dad. I could have kept them out of trouble,” Travis sighed, turning to face his uncle, his seventeen-year-old features strained from the stress.

“Alright, I’m not going to lie, ever since your dad was a kid, he found some of the most unusual ways to get into trouble. It’s like he has a trouble-homing beacon on so it knows where to go. But somehow he always comes out smelling sweeter than when he went in. Now, I don’t know what kind of mess he’s gotten himself into this time, but there’s no reason at all to think he’s not going to pull out of it like he always does.” Ron’s words seemed to have a measurable effect on Travis. “Come on, we’ve got a lot of work to do before they get back.” Ron wrapped his arm around Travis’ shoulder and showed him exactly where to start digging.

***

“Hi Tony, how you doing?” Tracy asked. She was sitting at the table with the radio.

“I wish they’d hurry up and get back,” he said, sitting down next to her. “This not knowing is horrible. If I was twenty years younger, I’d be out there looking for them.”

“I saw you on that on-ramp. I think you could handle yourself just fine.”

His eyes twinkled at her as he flashed a smile and grabbed her hand. “How have you put up with him so long?” Tony asked, half kidding, but also half serious. “That kid has more kinks and quirks than piping done by the Three Stooges.”

“That’s a pretty old reference, Tony, and I never liked that show growing up.”

“Butch…I mean Mike and I,” Tony started with a faraway look in his eye, “used to sit and watch it every Saturday morning. I’d seen them all, years before as a kid, but it was a way for the two of us to be together to do some bonding. I’d always wished that I had spent more time with my children as they were growing up, but Mike got the least time of any of them. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, now that I think about it.” And then he smiled.

“Well, at least I know where he gets his humor from. They’ll be back, Tony.”

“You’re that sure?” Tony asked, looking her in the eyes.

“I am,” she answered. “Do you want me to get you some more coffee?” Tracy asked, getting up so as not to give away her illusion of holding it together.

“I would,” Tony said, handing her his cup.

As Tracy was leaving the room, she turned to answer her father-in-law. “In spite of every flaw that man possesses, and there are more than I care to count, he is a wonderful father and husband with whom I cannot imagine spending the rest of my time here on earth without. That is why I have put up with him and why I know he will be back.”

Tears welled up in Tony’s eyes.

“I’ll be right back with the coffee,” Tracy said, giving Tony some time to collect himself.

Chapter Twenty-One – Mike Journal Entry 12

It was hours later when Mary finally called Josh downstairs to eat, and I thought it would be a little weird if I stayed upstairs and played with his Lego’s by myself. As it was, it had been a brief, enjoyable respite from the horrors of the last few months. We created all sorts of alternate worlds with the plastic building blocks. Every last one of them did not contain a zombie, not a one.

The table was set with a meal consisting of an MRE and was as presentable as possible, considering the nature of the product being used. I pulled out a chair to sit with the rest of the dinner attendees when Mary spoke.

“That chair isn’t for you,” she said disdainfully.

“Okay,” I said furrowing my eyebrows. “Who is it for then?”

“BT,” she said as she tore a cheese packet with her teeth.

“You know he’s still asleep, right? I just passed him on the way in here and he’s snoring so loud, it sounds like he’s clearing a forest.”

“The fact remains that it is his seat,” she repeated.

“Okay.” My eyebrows still furrowed. I was missing something, but I had not a clue as to what.

Mrs. Deneaux was at the head of the table and was looking directly at me. She was smiling as she forked in a large portion of military surplus ham steak.

“Can I eat?” I asked Mary.

“You’ve worn out your welcome,” she said, looking at me with a piercing stare.

“Mom?!” Josh rang out. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Hush, honey. Eat your dinner.”

Josh stood up and began to walk away from the table. “I’ll eat when he does.”

“You’ll sit down and do what I say, young man!” she yelled. “What have you said to him?” She turned venomous on me.

“We were building spaceships with Lego’s,” I said, backing up. “The only thing I said to him was how cool his ship had come out, and once or twice I asked him for a certain piece. What the hell is going on? I don’t know you well enough to illicit this response. I mean, sure if you spent the time to really get to know me, I’d be able to do this to you on a fairly routine basis.” I was shooting for humor, but ended up with a self-inflicted wound. She stared back flatly at me.

“We’ll be leaving tomorrow,” I told her.

“We are?” Gary asked, I noticed he had not stopped eating his meal. I wanted to thank him for his solidarity.

“You can’t!” Josh cried.

“What about BT? Is he ready to go?” Gary asked around a mouthful of something that resembled meat. “And Paul? We still need to find him.”

It was quicker than a cobra strike and could have been as lethal, the look that Deneaux shot at Gary.

My brain was tossing all this info together in the washing machine of my mind, but no matter how much spin I put on it, it still kept coming out dirty and stained. Deneaux had planted bad seeds about me in Mary’s head. Deneaux wanted us kicked out of here, but why? My mind began to spin faster, not just out of here, meaning this house, but out of here, meaning this city. She was covering something up and all that it could be was Paul. Brian was a dead zombie. How he became a zombie could be debated and how he was shot was up for question also, but the fact remained he had been a zombie and Deneaux had every right to dispatch of him. Clinical word I told my brain as I thought of my former ally in survival.

“Two days,” I told Mary, but her head was shaking in the negative. “I need two days. Tomorrow we will go out all day, looking for my friend.” Deneaux’s fork hesitated for a split second as it traveled to her pursed, shriveled lips.

She put her full fork down on her Chinette plate.

“Really, Michael, you just told her that we would be leaving tomorrow. I do not think it is fair to her that you should put her and her son in this much danger.”

“Thank you, Vivian,” Mary said, reaching out and clasping Deneaux’s claw, I mean, hand.

I looked at Deneaux with my “I know what you’re trying to do” gaze. She merely smiled.

“Fine, tomorrow it is,” I told Mary. Deneaux’s smile grew further, I was afraid her paper thin skin was going to tear as it stretched beyond its limits. “We’ll move to your neighbor’s house.” Deneaux’s smile evaporated.

Mary shot from her seat. “You can’t!”

“Sure I can. Who do you think you are to tell me where I can set up my base of operations?”

“That’s too close!” she yelled again.

“I’ve got one friend who is missing and another that hasn’t awakened in hours. And you’ve seen the size of him. How far do you think I can carry him? I’m not going very far until I get both issues resolved,” I said to Mary as much as I did Deneaux.

Mary plopped down in her seat, cupping her head in her hands. “Two days and you promise you’ll go?”

“I’ll leave this house and your general vicinity, yes,” I told her.

“That’ll have to do,” she answered solemnly.

“Yes,” Josh said, pumping his fist.

“Can I eat now?”

“Not at the table,” she said without removing her head from her hands.

That was fine with me. If I wasn’t with my immediate family, I preferred to eat alone. I didn’t generally like people enough to break bread with them and make idle chit chat about things I didn’t give a crap about; and don’t get me started if I came across signs of uncleanliness on their utensils or dishes. It was best to not go down a road lined with potholes, when holding such a fragile, glass-wrapped psyche like my own.

I grabbed BT’s MRE off the table before she could object and headed into the living room. Josh was immediately on my heels. Mary had not stopped him, probably hadn’t pulled her head up yet to take note. BT slumbered on as I tore open the near nuclear-proof plastic wrapping.

I don’t know how many of you have ever had dealings with MREs, but if you’ve survived this long, then you, my friend, are a survivalist and EVERY survivalist has at one time or another had an MRE, whether from the military or an Army/Navy surplus store. (You know those places that were located in the worst parts of every town and the guy behind the counter looks suspiciously at every customer like they could be the feds come to get his secret cache of hand grenades and rocket launchers in the back room.)

If, on the off chance that you have somehow made it this far without one, I will relate a short story. When I was in Marine Corps boot camp, eating was one of the only events that any recruit could sort of look forward to. I say “sort of” because we generally were not allowed to finish any meal. I can, without even thinking about it, honestly tell you that I threw more food away during my three and a half months of boot camp than I actually ate.

When we went to the dining halls, there was a chance I would get to shovel as much food into my mouth before the DIs would start barking at us to get back outside and in military formation. The times we spent out in the field without access to a dining hall, however, were times of depravation and starvation. The DIs would put a box of MREs out in a field, usually somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred or so yards away, and then tell us that we had five minutes to eat. So, we would race out to the box and tear into it, which in itself takes a little to get through. Removing the metal banding straps without tools was always a good time to see who would bleed first, then as the piñata of meals fell to the ground, it was a scramble to grab a meal. There was not the luxury of choosing one particular meal over another. Did I tell you this one little tidbit? There are twelve meals in an MRE case and we had two boxes. There were thirty Marine recruits in my platoon, easy enough math. You think people fighting for a stupid, sold-out, hot toy during Christmas is fierce? Tell a starving Marine you just took the last meal.

Looking back on it, the ones that didn’t get the meal were probably better off. I can’t tell you how many fingernails I tore, trying to tear through the five mm gauge, sealed-by-a-glue-fanatic bags. Ripping with teeth was perhaps marginally better, chipped tooth, bleeding fingers, to-MAY-toe, to-MAH-toe, just give me my fucking food! Alright, so let’s see where we are. Sprint to box, five guys trying desperately to crack boxes open, ensuing fight for insufficient meals as they spill to the dirt, check so far. So now you have battled and won a meal and are hiding your kill from your fellow predators. You have successfully torn through the hard exterior carcass to get at the “meat and potatoes” so to speak. It doesn’t matter much whether it is wombat or porcupine meat, you’re going to eat it.

By this point, three of the five allotted minutes have been used up, and now for the topper. Apparently, Marine DIs do not make much money because they cannot afford watches that keep particularly good time. I would finally be at a point where I could rip open the food’s foil container and squeeze food down my gullet (forget the plastic utensils, forget chewing, this was all about sustenance) when the DIs would start screaming at us to assemble. Now some of you may not have ever joined the services. That is fine; we all walk our own path in life, some of you may have chosen the Army, or were maybe a little smarter and went to the Navy or quite possibly, you were a genius and joined the Air Force. But I was in the Marines. When your DI screamed at you to be somewhere you did it, no questions asked.

The gut-crippling clutches of hunger were far outweighed by the prospect of suffering the wrath of a DI who felt you had wronged him. Some of you sneakier souls are thinking, don’t those camis have dozens of pockets? Yes, they do. Then why not shove your uneaten food in those and eat them later? Any former Marines want to answer this one? Because, my dear reader, DIs know about pockets and they know about what lengths a desperate starving recruit will go to. You would be treated less harshly in the real world if you had just killed a cop and his partner caught you first and was alone with you for a half hour before his back-up got there.

Some of you may scoff at that analogy, I had to stand at the position of attention while the recruit next to me suffered the wrath of two DIs for trying to heist a jelly packet that he had shoved down his trousers. By the time they were done with him, well let’s just say that the jelly packet would have been the only thing he would have been able to eat.

***

I ended up with a beef stew MRE packet. Think Dinty Moore, but gross. The fat congealed at the top of the packet was the thickest part of the whole meal, including the mystery meat. I ate everything, I was famished. I looked over to BT, who was still sleeping. It left me wondering if getting Tomas into the mix was a good call or not. I had no viable alternative, but still it nagged at me; knowledge is power and now Tomas had some. Life was already precarious. Why I felt the need to keep digging holes around the lip of the precipice was beyond me.

I could hear Deneaux in the next room trying to comfort Mary. It was like listening to a snake tell its prey that everything would be alright. Sure, for the snake it would be. I was staring so hard at BT, I wasn’t even looking at him anymore, if that makes any sense. I never noticed when his eyes opened.

“You scare me sometimes,” BT said, his vocal chords sounding coarse and dry.

I quickly pulled my thousand-yard stare back in. “Yeah, well you do that to me all the time.”

“So we’re here a few more days?” he asked as he pulled himself up to a sitting position.

“What’d you hear?” I asked him.

“Enough to know that you must have stomped all over Deneaux’s prized azaleas. She does not like you.”

“It’s more than that, I agree she’s not a fan, but there’s something more. Do you have enough strength to head upstairs?” BT nodded. “I figure the old bat has ears like one.”

Josh laughed.

“Josh is everything all right in there?” Mary called.

“You really shouldn’t let him get too much influence from Michael. He sets bad examples,” Deneaux chirped into Mary’s ear.

“Tell me again why you decided to come with us?” I asked, before she could respond, I continued on. “Or better yet, why did I allow you to come with us?”

I could hear her over-exaggerated heavy sigh from where I was.

“Mom, I’m fine, we’re going to play with my Lego’s again,” Josh said, winking to me.

“Be careful,” Mary said.

“From the Lego’s?” Josh asked, completely confused.

“You know what I mean,” she answered.

Josh shrugged his shoulders and mouthed, “No, I don’t” to me.

“I do,” I soundlessly worded to him and then waved him to go upstairs.

BT followed, the big man was moving slowly and had to take a break halfway up the stairs.

“You alright?” I asked him from the top of the stairs.

“I didn’t know you cared,” he said a little more heatedly than perhaps he meant to, as he apologized when he got up to me. “I’m sorry, man, I feel like I’ve got the flu, without all the phlegm.”

“Gross,” Josh said. “Come on,” he said, pushing the door to his room open.

BT almost crashed into a rendition of a B-1 bomber as he headed straight for the bed to plop down on it. Josh’s bed creaked and groaned from a pressure it had not been designed to bear. Josh and I stared for a few seconds waiting for the resultant collapse.

BT, getting wind of what we were doing, spoke. “It’ll hold,” he growled, and as if intimidated by his words, the bed did as it was told.

“Can I stay?” Josh asked. “I know you guys came up here to talk and get away from the women, but I’m a man too, so I should be here.”

“It’s your house, my man,” BT said. “I don’t see why not.”

I was more inclined to send him packing for a few minutes, but I don’t think he was going to do any heart to heart talking with Deneaux anytime soon.

“What’s going on, Mike?” BT asked. “I caught some of her conversation with Mary, but I kept drifting in and out. All I could really tell is that she wants to get out of here as quick as possible.”

“It’s nothing concrete, BT, but she’s trying to cover her tracks.” I related the story of finding Brian and how he was facing away AFTER she had called him, and how she now was in possession of Paul’s rifle. I also mentioned how she had said she was alone, but the house she was staying in provided clues to the contrary. “It’s nothing but a suspicion, but she did something she’s trying to cover up and she wants us to leave the scene of the crime before we turn up any evidence.”

“Brian’s dead,” BT said wiping his hand down his face. “Man, I almost don’t want to go back to your brother’s and see what this does to Cindy.”

“I cannot leave here until I know about Paul. There’s no way I could look Erin in the face and tell her that I have absolutely no clue what happened to her husband and my best friend.”

“So Brian was a zombie? Why lie about anything to do with that then?” BT asked confused. “Could the bullet have spun him around or anything?”

I looked over to Josh before I replied. “Exit wound was on his face.”

“Gross,” Josh said, I agreed implicitly.

“She’s acting so shifty, even more so than usual. I don’t have a good feeling about Paul.” I hitched a little, I’m still mostly human I thought, I’m still entitled to have feelings. “I’ve known him for thirty years. I owe it to him at the very least to find out what happened.”

“You’ve got to prepare yourself for the real possibility that he is no longer with us,” BT said tenderly.

“I know that man, I do. With a rifle, Paul wasn’t a huge threat; well without…” I didn’t, I couldn’t finish the damn sentence.

“I’d like to head out with you in the morning,” BT said. “Help look for him.”

“Me too,” Josh threw in before I could even tell BT no.

“No, on both counts.”

“You gonna stop me?” BT said, trying to rise up off the bed and use his height advantage as a mitigating factor.

“BT, Josh could stop you right now.”

Josh looked over at me like maybe I shouldn’t be throwing him under the bus quite like that.

“Dammit, Mike! I’m as weak as you right now,” BT said, cursing. “I can barely move.”

I didn’t rise to his bait, I did think about putting him in a headlock though, just because I thought I could probably take him. But merely to gaze upon the man is to feel intimidation. “You sure you never played in the NFL?”

“Why? Because I’m big and I’m black?” BT said with some force.

I thought about it. “Well, yeah.”

He laughed. “Played some college ball, had some pro scouts interested. It never went any further.”

And he dropped it, I don’t know if there was no more to add or he didn’t want to talk about it.

“What time are we leaving tomorrow?” Josh asked.

“No way, kiddo,” I told him. “Your mom, if given the chance, would throw me out into the street in front of a convoy.”

“A what?” Josh asked.

“A bunch of trucks,” BT clarified. “And he’s right. It’s too dangerous out there for you.”

“I’m almost twelve,” Josh said, making it sound as authoritative as possible.

“Yeah, and I’m sure you’re going to want to make thirteen,” I told him. And then reality with its ugly iron fist hit me with an uppercut. What really is the rest of his life going to encompass? Eventually, they are going to run out of food and they will have to leave their relatively safe haven and neither seemed to have the skills to scavenge in a hostile world. Basically, they were living on borrowed time.

That didn’t mean I was taking him with me on a learning expedition, but I still felt for the kid and his mother. Her ex-husband, his father, was gone (much like Paul, crept in. I squashed it heavily, but the thought kept peeking from around the edges) and he wasn’t coming back. How many “families” were there still out there like this? Isolated, each its own island of remoteness. There could still be a salvageable community in this city, but they would never be able to become cohesive. There was no communication, no ability to seek others out. The populace would be too fearful to create bonds anyway. There might be a few brave souls like Mary that would open a door to a stranger, but she was in the minority. We were just as lucky she hadn’t shot us instead.

Between zombies and criminally opportunistic humans, the world was merely a shell. The day of humans as the dominant species on the planet was coming to close and it was just as violently dangerous and deadly as the great comet strike that took out the dinosaurs two hundred million years ago. There would be a few viable communities still intact, places like Little Turtle or Easter Evans School, but as the zombies’ resources became fewer and fewer, they would seek these last food zones out relentlessly. Nothing would be able to withstand that type of onslaught.

Ultimately, the zombies and Eliza would have won, but what was the prize? She would rule a planet of mindless eating machines. I can’t imagine she had thought this out completely. She gets off on the power she holds over people and the fear she instills in their hearts. Zombies didn’t care, at all, they eat. And make no mistake, we would be just like every other extinct species on the planet, gone and for good. Seen any Tasmanian wolves lately? Maybe a dodo bird or two? There is no species regeneration. And Eliza and Tomas would hardly qualify as Adam and Eve.

Would she live long enough to see another sentient being rise from the ashes of our deaths? Would dolphins come ashore and finally take their rightful place as care-takers of the land? Would zombies give anything a chance to get a foothold? They ate everything. They were worse than locusts. They stripped the land clean of every type of animal. Looks like it was going to be the age of plants. I hope Eliza likes roses.

I had spent the last few seconds mulling over my dark thoughts when Josh interrupted me. Maybe the kid had an idea what he was in for. “I will be thirteen. I miss my dad, but I know he’s not coming back. I don’t tell my mom that because she needs to believe that I think he is. I need to see what it is like out there. We won’t be able to stay here forever, no matter what my mom says. Sometimes I think that she just doesn’t want to think about it. I think about it every day. We’ve got maybe six months of food and three months of bottled water, so what time are we leaving?”

“You’re a realist, Josh, and I can appreciate that,” I told him, and that was the honest truth. “But you’re not my kid and the danger out there, it’s real. This isn’t a training exercise. I would no sooner put you in any needless danger than I would any of my own.”

Mary had at some point come up the stairs and had been at Josh’s doorway while I spoke to him. She grudgingly nodded at me for what I said to him, but she still didn’t want him to be with me. The kid might have been thinking about going out at some point while he was with his mother, but he had never before voiced it. So again, something else was my fault by default.

“Come on, Josh. It’s time for bed,” Mary said, grabbing her son by the shoulders, steering him towards his bed.

It didn’t seem that late to me, but that wasn’t what this was about anyway. I took one longing look at the Lego’s I wanted to play with and headed downstairs, making sure that BT led the way. If he fell down the stairs behind me, I’d be crushed.

Mary came down a few minutes later. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t put any wild thoughts in my son’s head,” she said hotly.

“Those ‘wild thoughts’,” I told her with air quotes and everything, “came from the mouth of your son without any prompting from me.”

“He doesn’t understand what is going on!” she yelled and then brought her voice down to that inside yelling tone, cognizant of the fact that she had just put her offspring to bed.

“I think you underestimate him. He understands, probably even more so than you. He knows that his father isn’t coming back, he understands that you have a finite supply of food and water and more importantly, he understands that as the man of the family, he is wholly unprepared to defend the both of you. I’m not arguing in the least to take him with me, Mary. I’m just telling you what is going through the boy’s head. He’s growing up fast because he has to. Just because last year he might have been playing with Pokemon cards and plastic dinosaurs doesn’t mean he can’t comprehend the danger around him now.”

Mary sat down hard, I thought for sure she was going to miss the couch completely, again. As it was, she had to put her hand on the armrest to keep her ass from going to the ground. After she had situated herself properly, she brought her wet hand to her face. “What the hell is this?” she said, showing her hand to me.

What the fuck? I thought. It’s not like I took a piss on her couch while she wasn’t looking.

BT raised his hand like he was in the second grade. “I tend to drool a little, when I sleep sometimes,” he finished, adding the qualifier.

“Gross,” Mary said, heading for the kitchen to wash her hand off.

“Thanks man,” I said to BT. “That took the heat off for a minute.”

“She’ll be back,” he said as we heard the water running in the next room.

“Wow, she’s pissed,” Gary said, coming into the room with us. He was talking, but looking at the wrapper to the granola bar he was eating. “These are fantastic, I’ve never heard of them,” Gary said around a mouthful of nuts. (I’m not sure exactly about the contents he was chewing on, I just wanted to write that). “I’d sleep with one eye open, nope maybe both eyes, one for Deneaux and one for Mary. It really is kind of funny how you bring out the worst in the females around you.”

“Ah, brother, the one constant I have in life, no matter how far I fall, someone in my family will be there to kick me where I lay.”

He smiled.

“Touching,” Deneaux said sarcastically. “What time are we leaving in the morning.”

“We?” I asked her.

“I want to find him as much as you do,” she said falsely.

“You don’t lie as well as you think you do,” I told her. “And you’re staying here.”

Her facial expression nearly matched Mary’s from a few moments previous. Deneaux left, heading to the opposite side of the house where there was a sitting room and a large chair. I could only hope that she would get sucked into the oversized cushions and teleported to an alternate reality, one where old crones were stoned for being witches. I think Salem may have had it right.

“Why would you let her know you’re suspicious? I’d rather tell a pit viper I was highly allergic to its venom and I didn’t have an antidote,” BT said.

“No way,” Gary said. “I’m calling your bluff.”

“Let it go, BT,” I said as BT turned to Gary. “He knows not what he says. And I want her to know because if she had anything to do with Paul getting hurt, I’ll kill her and she knows it. She’ll get desperate and even the devil can make mistakes.”

“So you’re going to leave her behind with me? Thanks, I don’t remember when I ended up on your shit list.”

“Luck of the draw.”

“Wonderful.”

“Maybe you can try to keep her away from Mary. The more Deneaux talks, the more poison she spills into Mary’s Kool-Aid,” I said.

“What does that even mean, Mike?” Gary turned to me.

“You know. Kool-Aid,” I said, not clarifying a thing.

“I have no idea what he means, do you, BT?” Gary asked.

BT shrugged. “I understand about half of what he says and of that only twenty-five percent makes sense.”

“You guys should take it on the road. I’m saying that Mary’s Kool-Aid is her business and that Deneaux is spreading lies about us, well, me specifically.”

“I know what you’re saying. I was making sure that you did too,” Gary said.

“Should we take shifts?” BT asked, eyeing his couch hungrily.

“I’ll take first watch,” I told them, my gut was telling me something was not quite right with the night. Odds were it was the road kill meat MRE, but it had been a while since I’d felt lucky and I’d rather be awake and alert for whatever came down the road.

Nothing happened while I stared out that window, yet the unease in me did not abate, but rather grew. I kept waiting for something, I occasionally even checked on the softly snoring Deneaux to see if she was trying to sneak up behind me and plant a knife in my neck. I could swear on more than one occasion, I felt the icy, cold tip break skin. Only once, did she scare the hell out of me when, on one of my many circuits around the house, her black eyes were staring at me through the gloomy night. She must have had a lot of enemies in her day; she was sleeping with her eyes open. This I knew because her snoring had not stopped. She looked like a cold, calculating reptile like that and I more than half expected her to strike from that chair. I’d take Durgan any day. He wasn’t smart enough in life to do anything but come straight at you. Deneaux seemed to have mastered the fine art of subterfuge. There wasn’t an angle she probably hadn’t exploited at one time or another, and I was wholly convinced, up to and including murder.

I returned to my chair, I had the jitters. My legs were bouncing up and down, restless leg syndrome, my ass, this was a full on epidemic. I won’t swear on a stack of Bibles that it was three am (mostly because I was afraid the Bibles would burst into flame), but it seemed that the witching hour had come to fruition and then the dread of death washed over me and was gone.

“Shit!” BT yelled, sitting up. He turned to me. “Was that Paul?”

My head dropped as I nodded.