For over half an hour, the trio scoured the bottom. BT wasn’t certain what they were looking for; surely not for the grieving widow’s husband. He was saddened for the loss of his friend until he caught sight of Henry who had not come within twenty feet of the rim. He was staring off in a completely different direction, his tail wagging furiously. He would have gone over to the dog to try and see what he saw if not for the next few events.
“Sir, there’s nothing here. Definitely nothing living.” Wilkins made sure to direct that last comment Tracy’s way.
The words had no sooner echoed off the walls of the crater than the earth began to shake as if in protest of his callousness. The ground shook for a solid ten seconds as the unstable pile fell in on itself another five feet.
“Wilkins, let’s go. Get you and your men out of there!” Joseph was urging the team.
The importance that the men needed to move faster was not lost on them, but to do so risked injury by slipping and falling on any number of matter both organic and inorganic. The ground shook again, followed by a squelching sound that was similar to two pieces of dry rubber rubbing against each other under high pressure.
“What the hell was that?” one of Wilkins’ men asked.
The answer came soon enough as brownish red ooze began to seep up from the ground the men found themselves on.
“What the hell?” Wilkins asked.
At first it was slow and merely making the ground wet. Then, from whatever underground pool this was coming from, the dam had burst, the ground losing definition as the sludge rose.
Gary vomited as a wave of heated air tainted with zombie guts blew up from the pit and over everybody. He was not the only one to fall victim to the stench. The juice from twenty thousand pulverized zombies was resurfacing. Wilkins and his men were in serious danger of drowning in the material.
“Start the trucks!” Joseph yelled. “If it gets over their heads I want you to drive.”
“Sir, I can’t pull them over this stuff, they’ll be shredded,” one of the drivers said.
Wilkins stopped to help one of his men who had fallen over. “My leg is stuck!” The man was wrenching at his knee, the inner workings of zombies already splashing above his calf. “Help me!” he begged Wilkins. “I don’t want to die like this!”
“Nobody does,” Wilkins answered. “Shut up for a second, and I’ll make sure you don’t have to.”
“Wilkins? Can you get him out?” Joseph asked. The question was clear enough, if you knew what to look for. If he couldn’t get the man out, Joseph didn’t want Wilkins to die pointlessly in a failed rescue.
“Get out of there,” Tracy was saying to herself.
As more slush was coming up, the accumulated weight was pushing the precarious pile down. This was compounded by the emptying space where the zombie guts were coming from and gave the illusion that the liquid was rising much faster than it was. What was a minute before at the men’s calves was now over their knees.
“Wilkins, let’s go!” Joseph shouted.
“Sir, I can’t get Heller free!”
“Stand aside, we’re going to have to pull him out. Now, Wilkins!”
Joseph directed the driver to move slowly. Heller was at an angle to the truck so that, when the vehicle pulled up, it twisted the upper half of his body. He screamed in pain. There was not a man or a woman in the area not looking down on the events playing out. While Wilkins was seeing how Heller would make out, the third man of the group was about halfway up the lip as three men pulled on his rope to aid his climb.
“A little more,” Joseph told the truck driver. Heller’s torso was twisted almost a full ninety degrees from his lower half.
Heller screamed again, and Tracy wasn’t sure if she could watch much longer. It was clear to her that the man was going to be pulled apart soon, much like those who were drawn and quartered centuries ago. The truck engine revved, Heller’s next scream was a high-pitched one, followed by the distinctive sound of bone cracking.
“He’s free!” Wilkins shouted, rushing forward to keep a passed-out Heller’s head above the muck line.
“I want men on both their lines, slow but steady pulling!” Joseph commanded.
By the time they came to the crater wall, the zombie slush was mid-chest and Wilkins was doing all he could to keep Heller from drowning. The man’s head kept lolling back and forth as he slid down into shock.
Fifteen more minutes and both were back on the perimeter. Heller was going to be on light duty for a while, his left leg broken in two places along with a bad case of bruised ribs. Wilkins had suffered some cuts and scrapes, but was immediately cleaned up and pumped with enough antibiotics to flush out an elephant.
Tracy could only stare down at the miasma. Mike’s fate lay within the swirling browns, reds and blacks down there. If, by some chance, he had survived the zombies, found a safe sanctuary away from their bites, and then his refuge was somehow strong enough to withstand the bombing, there was very little chance it would be airtight and not allow the pressed zombies inside. Even if by some miracle it was, he would be running out of air by now. She would mourn when she got home. All she hoped for now was that his death had been swift and merciful; something that was not in abundance these days. Even Trip, whose grasp on reality was tenuous at best, seemed to realize the solemnity of the event.
The only one who seemed wholly unaffected by the destruction and loss was again Henry, who had rolled over and was now wriggling around with his legs airborne in a desperate bid to sate the itch he had on his back.
“Are you going to be alright?” Joseph asked Tracy as he came up to her. Travis and Justin kept a close eye on the man and their mom, not really sure which way this was going to play out.
BT had walked away, too distraught to even comfort his friend’s wife. Dennis had no such compunction about displaying his heartache in public. He sat down hard on the lip of the hole, his head in his hands as he grieved for his friend.
“I’m going to need a truck,” Tracy said, pulling her gaze away from the scene below. “I’m ready to get my boys home,” she told Joseph evenly. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her lip may have held the slightest quiver, but she stood strong.
“I have no trucks I can spare, but we will give you a ride until such time as I can secure you a vehicle,” he told her.
Tracy nodded.
Within ten minutes they were heading out. Tracy felt it was unnaturally quiet, although that could have been attributed to the rhythm of her heart, which had been broken.
“A BMW lot? Now we’re talking,” BT said as they pulled up. It was the only blip of sunshine on an otherwise abysmal day.
Joseph ordered his men to get two SUVs running and siphoned other tanks to make sure the fuel tanks were full. “Ma’am,” Joseph told Tracy when she got behind the seat.
“Thank you for saving us. I will, however, never forget that you did not at least try to save my husband.”
“I understand, and I am sorry for your loss. Good luck, and I wish you nothing but the best.” He spun his finger in the air and pointed back toward the truck. His men jumped on board and left in a black plume of exhaust. The parking lot was much quieter with the heavier diesel engines gone; the purring of the two BMWs not much louder than a person whispering.
Justin helped Henry into one of the SUVs. The dog immediately stretched and took the majority of the second row. Travis got in beside him.
Gary came to Tracy’s side. “Do you mind if I ride with Steph and Trip? I don’t think I can take any more smell,” he said, pointing to Henry who sneezed in response.
“Great. I’ll take his spot.” BT hopped into the passenger seat.
“That’s fine. I wasn’t going to sit there,” Justin said sarcastically. “I’ll get in with the stoner.”
“Great, then there isn’t a problem,” BT said as he pulled the door shut. He turned to Tracy. “I don’t think I could listen to that perpetual pot-head spew one more thing about how he visited
Gandhi or some shit.”
Dennis moved to the rear of the car, having the entire third row for himself. Tracy hoped he stopped crying soon. It was withering away her resolve to stay strong until such point that she could collapse in on herself, much like the Demense building had.
“I don’t think so,” Stephanie told Trip who was sitting behind the steering wheel of the other SUV. “The last time you drove, you thought it was a rocket ship.”
“It wasn’t?” Trip asked as Stephanie gripped his shoulder and gently pulled him out. “Get in the backseat,” she told him as she helped him back in.
“Wonderful,” Justin said as Trip sat.
“You live here?” Trip asked him.
“Wonderful,” Justin repeated.
Gary hopped into the passenger seat. This was the second time he was going home without Mike, and he felt the loss more acutely this time than he had the first. For a few moments he wished he’d died in those first days of the zombie outbreak. It would have been over a long time ago, and I wouldn’t have had to go through any of this, he thought in a dour mood. The joy and the victories were too insignificant and placed too far away to outweigh the overwhelming losses and defeats that kept piling up at a rapid pace.
Tracy pulled out of the parking lot, hoping to put as many miles between her and Mike’s final resting spot before the day was through.
Chapter Nineteen – Mike Journal Entry 9
My head was ringing and my stomach felt like I’d been rabbit punched by the Hulk. Somehow it was comforting to see that Tommy was suffering as well. This is such a strange reaction in humans. Why is sharing misery such a common event? You would think people would try and pull themselves up instead of drag each other down. It really was only a matter of time until man took himself out of the picture. If man were to make it out of this disaster, which I wasn’t holding onto much hope, it would be a century and a half at the minimum before we came off the edge of extinction. By then, who knows? Wolves would probably be running the show.
I couldn’t tell if I was in the midst of a severe case of vertigo. Either the building was shifting, or we were actually moving. Tommy was yelling something, but I might as well have been in Tibet behind one of those huge gongs while the monks were performing their rendition of Moby Dick by Led Zeppelin. For those of you who may not know, this is a drum solo. It was possible I was as deaf as a politician to the outcries of his constituents. Tommy was pulling his seat belt out, that made no sense to my brain, which had been acting like a ping-pong ball inside my skull.
“Seat belt!” I know I shouted it, because my throat hurt after I said it even though I didn’t hear it.
Explosions were going on to the rear of us, the truck lurching forward as the concussions slammed into the back of it. I was just picking my blood-dripping head off of the dashboard when I saw something run past that was huge and on fire. The ape had escaped. If I had the presence of mind and a rifle, I would have shot it. But what were the odds we would ever cross paths again? Yeah, I already knew the answer to that question before I asked it. I could only hope it would be on my terms, not his. And yes, I knew the answer to that statement as well.
Tommy saw it, too, and we moved in its direction, maybe to run it down or maybe just because it was heading out. Most likely, this was the way it came into the facility; and therefore, in theory, it would know the way out.
The ground under us trembled violently. This was how I imagined the world was going to end, being split apart by major earthquakes or a meteor strike, not a microscopic virus. Even with the seat belt on, I was in danger of giving myself whiplash and a concussion. The ground movement was so violent that it was impossible to see clearly as the earth was jumping by feet. It was impossible to focus.
I don’t know how Tommy was able to drive. His whole body was leaning on the steering wheel, I guess in an attempt to keep the truck from veering. The ground leapt up one more time, higher than all the other times combined. The truck went with it and, for heart-lurching moments, we were in flight before the truck collided back down with the pavement. I stupidly looked into the side view mirror. Ever watch any movie or documentary about volcanoes? You know that pyroclastic cloud that just swoops down the side of the mountain and destroys everything in its path? Yeah, well, that’s what it looked like, and it was rapidly gaining on us.
“Faster, Tommy!” I may have audibly heard my words this time. I’d either found a new level of volume, or I’d regained a little of the hearing that I’d lost.
Porkchop was seated between us, alternating looking from my mirror to Tommy’s. “Yeah, faster!”
Tommy glanced in his mirror as well, his eyes growing large. He might have been scared, but we weren’t moving any faster. I looked to his foot; it was already planted on the floor of the truck.
“Shit.” I rolled up my window. Most likely this was going to be as effective as hiding behind lawn furniture when someone shot a bazooka at you, but this was all about perceived safety right now.
I could not keep my eyes off of the mirror as the gray cloud rushed to greet us. The force was enough to lift the rear of the truck off of the ground. Tommy was struggling to keep the wheels straight, and us, from being broadsided much like the ship in The Poseidon Adventure. (Cheesy 70’s movie where the ship Poseidon turns sideways to a tidal wave and is turned over upside-down.) My daughter Nicole loved that movie, made me watch it a dozen times, which was about eleven-and-a-half times more than I wanted to.
There were a couple of times when the back of the truck was desperately trying to come even with the front, and it was only Tommy’s yanking and cranking on the wheel that kept this from happening. I don’t know how he knew which way to turn. We were completely encased within the debris cloud. I expected a wall at any moment to jump out at us so we could brutally crash into it.
The cabin was beginning to fill with the foul air. It was a caustic toxic mix of plastics and zombies that threatened to choke the lives out of us. I was trying my best to take short, measured breaths; I wasn’t having any luck. It was like I’d just run the fifty-meter dash and was trying to regulate my breathing. When the inside of the cab became as dense with ash as the outside, I figured this was it. Porkchop’s eyes had closed. I was afraid he had passed out and was moving steadily toward death. Then, like we were being birthed from the pits of hell, we emerged into beautiful, blissful sunshine. Tommy and I both rolled down our windows as he drove a few hundred more yards before finally stopping. I jumped down and hauled Porkchop out with me. While I was busy coughing up my lungs, Porkchop sat up from where I deposited him.
He stood and patted my back as I tried to get all of the poisons out of me. “Mr. Talbot, you should have really held your breath like I did. I used to win all the time against my friends when we would bet who could go underwater and stay there the longest. I even beat Bobbie Gibbons, who I saw go up for a gulp of air and come back underwater and tried to make it look like he didn’t, but I had water goggles on and could see him do it clearer than I can see you. Although he tried to deny it, said I was jealous that he could hold his breath longer, which was funny, because I still beat him, so that really didn’t make much sense. You okay? Every time you cough it looks like you’re smoking. Can your lungs be on fire?” He was bending over trying to peer down my throat. “I don’t see any flames, I think you’re alright.”
I wanted to thank him for his expert advice. “Go help Tommy,” I hacked out. From the sounds of it, Tommy didn’t sound much better than I did.
If I thought my throat was raw before, it was absolutely skinned now. It felt like I’d swallowed shaved glass. So even when Porkchop handed me a water bottle that had clearly been drank from, I didn’t refuse. At that exact moment, germs could kiss my ass.
We all sat there a few minutes longer, looking to the place we had escaped. More than a city block was laid to waste and now sunken in. It would be hours before the dust settled and the fires went out. I had no desire to be there for it. We’d emerged
victorious, but we’d suffered a loss with Doc gone. I was under the assumption my family was safe, though; and we’d saved Porkchop, so I was actually feeling pretty good. That was tempered slightly knowing Deneaux and the damned ape were still out there, and like steel to a magnet, they’d both find their way to me. It was a foregone conclusion.
We were still hacking up lungs as we, once again, entered the truck and departed.
Tommy recovered faster than I did, but by degrees I was feeling better. Some of it was putting distance between our former captors and us, but a big chunk was that I was racing to meet back up with my family.
“I don’t know if I thanked you, Tommy,” I said, turning to him. He didn’t say anything. “You risked everything and I appreciate that.”
“We’re family, Mr. T. What choice did I have?”
It left him a lot of choices, but I didn’t bring them up. “Just, thank you,” I said, reaching over Porkchop and tenderly touching Tommy’s knee. The gesture, which was meant as one of affection, seemed to cause him pain and discomfort.
He looked over at me.
“What, kid? What do you have to tell me? It’s written all over your face, I just don’t read vampire so good.” My heart started thumping in my chest. Did he know something about my family that he hadn’t told me? Were they in danger or worse? If he didn’t fucking spit it out soon, I would beat it out of him. Okay, that’s hypothetical…or is it rhetorical? Because he could kick my ass.
“There’s more coming.”
“Huh?” I was expecting something along the lines of Tracy has been kidnapped by a rogue band of Jehovah’s Witnesses, not some vague threat. “Zombies? Are you talking about zombies? There will always be more of them coming.”
He shook his head.
“That ape? There’ll be more of them apes coming?” That was indeed terrifying, and sort of funny in a shtick 60s movie kind of way. I could see the marquee now: Planet of the Zombie Apes.
“Rednecks?” He shook his head. “Militant ants hell-bent on the destruction of the planet? What, Tommy? Because I can keep guessing all day long.”