***
“There’s more,” Tommy said.
I stood, hoping that my bones were not as hollow as I felt. “Do tell. I could use a bit of shitty news right about now.”
“The order I put to halt the progress of BT’s zombieism will unravel now that I no longer have as much power.”
My legs weren’t hollow, but they were having great difficulty supporting my weight at the moment. “How long?” I asked him.
With considerable effort, Tommy shrugged his shoulders.
“You once told me that you saw your sister get bitten, then she ultimately killed her sire. How did she survive? Did she walk all these years like this? Is that even possible? I feel hollow, Tommy. I can sense the pain I should be feeling, but I’m numb to it. With every beat of my heart I flip from my heart breaking at the death of my father to an absolute fathomless void, where nothing not even emotions can stem from. I know I should be concerned for my friend’s health, sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not. I know I should be loving my family, and yet there are times when I can’t even remember what the emotion entails. I felt more concern for a dead squirrel in the roadway when I was human than I do now.”
***
Tracy shivered as she overheard words she wasn’t supposed to.
***
“Eliza killed her sire. She was not diminished from his death, but rather enhanced by it. That was why she never let any of her charges live for very long, lest they try to take her power from her. The emptiness will go away, you’ll fill it in with something, Mr. T. My sister filled hers in with hate and cruelty for everyone and everything. But that’s not who you are, you have it, we,” he stressed, “have it in us to fill it with something better.”
“You’re still a vampire right?” I asked him.
“I am.” He let his head drop.
“Why now the change back to this ‘Tommy’ persona? How can I ever trust or believe you, if I ever even care again?”
“I took on a large part of my sister when she turned me. With her influence gone, I’m more the boy you remember.”
“I wish I could believe that…I do…for my family.”
I watched as zombies burned by the hundreds. With some effort, I was able to walk down towards one of the pyres. I should have been close enough for my skin to be melting, and still I quaked in the unoccupied recesses of my mind.
“You alright, Mike?” Ron asked a good fifteen feet behind me. I turned to see his hands shielding his face from the intense heat.
I waved him away, not because I was concerned for his safety, but rather, I wanted to be alone. I wondered if I would feel anything if I walked just a few more feet into the intense blaze.
Tommy stepped up beside me. “The shaman did it.”
I didn’t say anything. I realized that at one time I would have had an answer for him, something revolving around, ‘Sure now all we need is some peyote, a shaman and sweat lodge and we’ll be all set.’
“We have a witch,” Tommy said, filling in the gaps in the conversation.
I turned and we walked back towards the house. Travis was watching me as I entered.
I went to BT’s room. “Good news, buddy.”
“They discovered a cure for sarcasm?” he answered.
“Better…road trip,” I told him.
“You’re kidding, right? You’re not, are you? Fuck…why? This is about the Jeep isn’t it? You want to go back and get your fucking Jeep! No, Mike I’m not traveling across the damn zombie infested country for a damn Jeep I won’t do it!”
I’ll admit that thought had crossed my mind, but even I wasn’t that nuts, although if our travels brought us anywhere near Colorado I was going to snag it.
“No, my friend, we need to find Doc Baker,” I told him.
“Oh, man, you know he’s probably dead,” BT said.
“I asked Tommy, he said he wasn’t.”
“And you believe the Edward wannabe?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Nothing, it was a character in a book I read before all this shit happened.”
“We need the Doc, BT.”
“Need? Why who’s dying?”
I kept staring not saying anything.
“Oh shit, it’s me isn’t it? Dammit, I finally get to rest my damn body and now we got to go gallivanting all over the damn place again.” BT put his shoes on.
I walked out in to the hallway. “Boys!”
“Not a chance, Talbot, not unless I’m coming with you,” Tracy said.
“Are you friggen clairvoyant?” I asked her.
“No, you’re just transparent.”
“I would like to go to,” Azile said, raising her hand slightly above her head.
“Fine…pack up. Travis, keep an eye on your uncle, I’m going to see if I can get in his closet trap door.”
EPILOGUE
Mrs. Deneaux watched from the truck cab as Tracy plunged the knife into Eliza’s chest. “Didn’t see that coming.” She said making sure to keep low and not attract any attention. She regretted her decision now to leave the Talbot household, once again she would be on her own. She wasn’t overly concerned because she did what all survivors did, she survived. She waited for another three days in that cab, living off the stores the driver had left behind, it wasn’t much but it was more than her and her boyfriend had when he had got them lost hiking the Ozark Mountains some forty years previous. At one point during the ordeal she had thought about killing him so she could feed. Luckily for Baxter he had redeemed himself the following morning by trapping a rabbit which they had shared over a small fire.
With no zombies in sight, Mrs. Deneaux left the confines of the truck cab, she stepped down onto the pavement, took care of some pressing matters. She then unhitched the trailer, got back in and started the rig up. Even she had to laugh at the irony of it all as she drove off into the sunset.
THE KISS
“Why me?” I begged. Her silence only confounded my bewilderment. “I can’t.”
The thin wisp of what some may construe as a smile vanished. As her arm came back down, I could feel the reneging of the offer. She approached slowly. I was going from freedom to food. My brain screamed for flight, the fight portion was nonexistent. This was no battle of wills, I was helpless, like a fear-frozen marmot I waited for the screaming eagle to descend and sink its claws deep into my flesh. I did not even have enough control to close my eyes. I watched in increasing horror as she approached; death would not be swift. My bladder burned to be released. I was denied even that last suffrage of indignity. A fly crawled into her nose. She paid it no more attention than the lice that swung freely from her dirty matted hair. A beetle plowed its way through a small hole in her neck holding a small nugget of meat, a trophy garnered from who knows where. The only thing still working was my olfactory sensors. This had to have been done on purpose. Gorge tried in vain to roar up and out of my stomach. The fetid odor was so palpable, I could see it, I could taste it. Like Campbell’s soup, it was so thick I could eat it with a fork. Yeah, she hadn’t cut off my sense of sarcasm either. Thin strips of flesh which used to be lips parted, revealing black cracked teeth from which strings of meat hung in decaying strands. Her charcoal gray tongue flicked over them, attempting to pull away some of the tastier morsels. She stood toe-to-toe with me, not six inches from my face. Sweat coursed down my body. I shook from impotence and then that stilled. I wouldn’t die fighting, but at least I’d be standing, small consolation. It’s like ‘winning’ a participation trophy in Little League baseball. Who gives a shit.
What would it feel like to have your face ripped open? Would she still my pain centers? Doubtful. I couldn’t tell much from her near-frozen features, but still I sensed that she was taking some form of perverse satisfaction from these events. She moved in closer; I would have offered her a mint if I had one. My eyes still were not allowed to close. My vision of her blurred as she moved in even closer. A fly landed on my eyeball. It was singularly up to this point in
my life, the most disgusting thing that had ever happened to me. Then my zombie girl topped it, she kissed me. My innards roiled in protest, my guts churned like a washing machine on spin cycle. If I wasn’t allowed output through my intake or outlet valves this was going to blow a hole through my midsection a la Ripley’s Alien. The kiss was not so surprisingly, very cold, but very surprisingly tender. It was literally the kiss of death from the dead. It doesn’t get much more ironic than that, does it? A Brillo pad wrapped around coarse grit sandpaper applied at a hundred and ninety revolutions per minute under skin-scalding hot water would never allow me to feel clean again. I was tainted, for fuck’s sake a zombie is kissing me. Didn’t she get my bio? I’m a card-carrying germaphobe!
As she slowly pulled away, a dark viscous fluid kept us tenuously connected. The fly finally descended from my eye to land on this small bridge. Her tongue shot out, incredibly long, and pulled the fly into her canines. I swear I could hear the small crunching of its delicate exoskeleton. The spin cycle was in full throttle. A whoosh of haunted air escaped her lips. She was laughing, she had known exactly what she had done and she found humor in her dark actions. She pulled back another foot and let loose her controls. I fell to the ground, afflicted with crippling cramps. I rolled into a protective fetal position hugging my midsection. Mount Vesuvius erupted. Hot refuse steamed on the cold ground; the whoosh of air which accompanied her amusement persisted. Glad I could be her entertainment. For long minutes I alternated between evacuating my stomach and pulling in long, cold drags of air. How long this happened, I’m not sure. The pain lessened minutely—small fractions of degrees is the best way I can explain it. Each breath was better than the previous but only in infinitesimally small measures. It might have been minutes or days, all reference to time was lost, although my cheek touching the ground was rapidly becoming cold and my refused refuse was not steaming anymore.
“Mike?” I heard a tenuously thin voice try to break through the paralyzing grip of insanity that was beginning to blanket my mind.
“Mike?” There it was again, a disassociated voice speaking an incoherent word. “Grab his legs, I’ll get his head.”
I felt myself being lifted and then, mercifully, blackness sheathed my capacity for thought. I was floating in a white void, but I was not afraid, I was free; free from burden, free from sin, free from responsibility…and then I think I puked again. Not because I could ‘feel’ the sensation, but because I heard the disgust from one of the people carrying me. I found it funny the same way an insane person finds humor in slinging shit at walls. How different was this from that? I was close to the edge, maybe I had even taken that first perilous step over and gravity had finally worked its magic. I was being pulled down into the abyss. There wasn’t a drug invented that would raise this sinking ship. I spiraled down. Whiteness faded to black, cognitive thought became an illusion.
***
Eventually, I will tell you what happened while I traveled the netherworlds, but that all hinges on what happens in the foreseeable future. I had come out from under my unnatural hibernation in remarkably good shape. There were no ill effects that I knew about; they would manifest later. I had lost weight and I was as thirsty as I had ever been, but after downing three huge glasses of water I felt right as rain, even more so. Now I know this sounds weird, but power is the word that comes foremost in my mind. Maybe healthy would be a better descriptive, but not as accurate, or as powerful. I just don’t know, and I really don’t have the time to dwell on it.
***
These are as near to the events as I can remember. Having lost the majority of my journals, I am thankful that I have found the power of an almost photographic memory with which to recreate the events. Some of them are indelible; it would take more than death itself to erase them from my mind. I should know.
A lot has happened since Little Turtle. I’ve lost a lot of friends, loved ones, and even a significant portion of myself. But we’re the closest we have ever been to a victory. Okay, scratch that, we are the furthest from defeat that we have ever been. We’ve almost pulled into a stalemate. I consider that a huge improvement. Hey, we take what’s given to us and do the best we can.
For three earth days I walked in Eliza’s world, on her side it was significantly longer. My thoughts are that it had much more to do with the perceived passing of time rather than actual, but tomayto, tomahto…who gives a shit when you’re in hell. Okay, not literally, but it wasn’t a walk in the park either. Henry just perked his ears up when he…what? Heard me think that? Is that possible? He was sitting with me doing his best to absorb the cold that flowed through me. He gave me a wide grin and laid his massive head back down on my lap.
“Son of a bitch,” I said aloud. “You can read my thoughts.” Henry’s little tail wagged furiously, his eyes were shut. The economy of movement in this dog was a study in perfection; it was damn near an art form.
But I’m digressing and it’s pretty much on purpose. I sat down here today with the express reason of relating all the events that happened while I was under Eliza’s spell? Was that it? More like poison. But do people that go through traumatic events like a car crash really want to relive the whole damn thing, like when the safety glass shatters and chunks of sharpened fragments imbed themselves in the side of your face, rupturing your eye? Or how about when you’re thrown violently sideways and the gearshift goes up and under your rib cage busting out your sternum, bone fragments cutting through the aorta, your life blood bleeding out inside of you. Are these things you want to revisit? I don’t.
My wife says it will be cathartic, I say bullshit, she just wants me to get out from under her feet. I have not come out of this last battle as well as I went in. I know it and she knows it. I’ve been diminished, that’s the best way I can put. I need to be around those I love CONSTANTLY and I think I’m driving Tracy a little nuts. But even in the best of times I had that effect on people. At least Henry doesn’t seem to mind my constant ministrations.
“Damn, with the tail again, Henry? You’re not even awake, I can hear you snoring.” His tail didn’t stop.
Fine, I’ll corral my thoughts, kicking and screaming mind you and I’ll probably lodge a formal protest when I’m done but let’s see where this journey brings me. Back from the edge or over it, right now both are viable alternatives to the way I feel now.
The kiss…that damned kiss, it would have been more humanly (humanely?) of her to just rip my face off and be done with me, but cruelty is (was) Eliza’s game. She survived the centuries with it as her guide, her driving force, and she was adept. She knew where I would end up, my guess is/was that she was hoping that I would never recover, that I would always be left to wander there, but she never took into account the power of love. How could she? She only ever had a taste of it, a morsel from her brother, whereas the Talbots basked in it like a Spring Break co-ed in coconut oil. (Good visual? Tracy probably won’t appreciate that, but she’s the one making me write this damn thing so she’ll have to damn well live with it!) Sorry, honey, if you read this
The damned kiss, I felt myself slipping away the moment our lips parted. Black dots began to invade my vision. First they were barely bigger than a black fly (which I have since come to loathe here in Maine. Want to know the seasons in Maine? It goes, Summer, Fall, Winter, Mud and Black Fly, I shit you not!) I should have picked a better locale for my last stand or final resting spot. Sorry, I am avoiding this trip down memory lane like a fat kid avoids fourth period gym.
So the spots began to expand—black fly, mosquito, house fly, horse fly, fucking wasp, crow—then the sensation of my head bouncing off the frozen tundra. For a while there was nothing more than the sensation of pure and utter blackness. I was aware, but I was alone. It’s hard to describe. I did not have the sensation of falling, but I also wasn’t rooted to anything. I was afraid to move not knowing if I would fall into an abyss or into a wall. Terror began to mount; I had never felt so powerless in my life. There was nothing I could do.
If she had just left me there, I would have been gone in a matter of hours, though the concept of time meant nothing there either.
By degrees the veil was unwrapped from my eyes, for time unimaginable there was a gauzy light that seeped into my vision, slowly that changed to a pre-dawn storm morning muted light. Then blissfully (at least at first) I was able to see, at least shapes, bathed in shadow but it was something. The human mind deprived of stimuli will begin to make its own nightmares up, like I needed any help in that department. The expanse that started to show itself could have been Mars as barren and rocky as it was. Or it could have been Eliza’s parched, dry, dead heart, either would fit. I found myself standing on a significant sized boulder, had I moved I would have fallen a good two or three feet, not enough to die but maybe twist an ankle maybe bust a knee cap, who knows I’m getting up in there in years stuff doesn’t work quite as well as when I used to take it for granted, like when I was a teenager.
I gingerly hopped down and tried to orientate myself, but the light did not come from a single source in the sky it was just an illumination across the entire expanse of my visage, that it was an ugly pea green did little to help with my discomfort.
“You ready for this, Talbot?” I asked myself. I even jumped a little it was the first sound I’d heard since this ordeal started and it startled me, God I hope nobody reads this. BT sees this and he’s gonna call me a little girl. One direction seemed as good as the next so I took off for what I figured was north, but only because that was the direction I was headed, there wasn’t a clue at all to let me know whether I had chosen wisely.
I whistled a little Zeppelin, When the Levee Breaks I think, maybe a bit of In My time Of Dying, followed by In the Evening, but my song choices started to sound a little ominous so I left it to the professionals. The light never changed in brightness as I trudged on through, at some points I could feel a ‘shifting’ in myself like I was being moved. And occasionally I swore I heard Tracy or the kids, maybe even a bark or two from Henry, but it was so far away it could have been brought along a non-existent breeze from a place that ceased to exist.