“If you’re so concerned about getting out of here quicker maybe you should be helping instead of hiding.”
Defiance was on her face, but defeat was in her features. She wanted to lash out but she didn’t have the intrepidity to go through with it. She settled back into her uneasy crouch, this time however she sat with her back to me. My hands began to defreeze by small degrees. The pins and needles affect gave way to nails and tacks and then finally to spikes and stakes. The pain was more intense than I was expecting. I must have been close to frostbite. As the torture began to subside I looked around the cab; I knew I had seen a pair of work gloves. They were cheaply made and would do little to stop the bite of the razor wire but I hoped that it would at least keep some of the bitter sting of the cold away. I stayed a few minutes longer than I needed to, gathering my reserves to go deal with our unwanted transients.
“Damn it,” I said as I shut off the truck. Jen jumped a bit but didn’t turn around. My feet had no sooner hit the ground, when I heard the telltale sound of the lock being engaged. “Useless!” I said a little louder than I needed to.
I was having a difficult time empathizing with her. Here we were in the fight of our lives and she had just given up. The side of me that didn’t want to kill, not even zombies, spoke up. ‘How would you feel if Tracy had become a zombie?’
‘Don’t even think it!’ My internal dialogue continued.
‘Or one of your kids?’
‘I’m telling you! Shut up!’
‘Well?’
‘Damn you! I’d probably want to curl up into a ball and die.’ My masculine side finally iterated.
‘Hmm.’ My feminine side mocked.
‘You can still kiss my ass.’ I aimed my rifle and fired off 5 rounds, killing all of our nonhuman visitors. My feminine side had been stilled.
The ensuing quiet was only briefly interrupted by the twang of wire cutters severing through wire holders. Carl hadn’t so much as turned to look as I had mowed down the noxious audience. My breathing had quickened as if from heavy exertion. Sweat formed and quickly began to freeze on my brow. I had yet to put the rifle down, gravity finally taking over and pushed the barrel towards the ground.
Ben, noticing my distress came over. “You all right Talbot?” he asked with concern.
It took a moment for me to acknowledge his presence. I turned towards him, my pupils dilated, my face as pale as the breath I exhaled.
“I could get real philosophical with that question, Ben.” And that was my only answer to his inquiry as I went to the ladder to see if Carl needed any assistance. Ben scratched his head and began zip tying the coils again.
Not much was said as the three of us worked, I know at least for me I was thankful for the lack of speech. It was much nicer to be lost in the hard work. Carl and I switched off on climbing the ladder. My legs were burning from the strain of going up and down and I would have said something but Carl didn’t so much as utter a heavy sigh and the guy was twenty years my senior. There was no way I was going to let him know I was hurting. Between my shifts on top I would help Ben coil and then pull the coil into the truck. We had a system and it was going well. I was thinking at this point we wouldn’t have to spend the night. The remainder of the day was eerily quiet, no more zombies, no other people and not even any animals. I could understand why there were no people, either they were zombies, dead, or fled. The animals had most likely taken off too, please don’t let there be zombie rabbits! But if the animals had fled because of the zombies, where were they? And as if my questions materialized into reality, I smelled them first. At first I had thought Carl had let one rip, but unless he had eaten rotten fish tacos the previous night, it couldn’t be him. I must have turned a shade of green because Carl finally broke his vow of silence.
“What’s a matter Talbot, you look like something’s disagreeing with you? It’s not all this hard work is it?” he asked, laughing a little at his own humor. I didn’t have to answer him, I watched as his face took on the same hue as mine. “Oh sweet Jesus!” He magically produced a bandanna, as only people of his generation can, and began to tie it around his face to block at least some of the odor.
Ben had at this point just emerged from the back of the trailer. “Oh geez! What is that smell!” he yelled.
“Talbot, we’ve got fifty more yards of wire to go,” Carl began. “Do we cut and run so to speak or stay and finish? But from that stench you know we’re not dealing with some onesy and twosy lost zombies, that smells like the mother lode.”
“Cut it,” I said as I made the executive decision. “All this wire does no good if we can’t get it there. I was wondering why there were no animals around here.”
My last words fell to the grounds without an ear to pick them up. Carl had already ascended the ladder to this time cut the wire itself and not the holders.
“Look out below!” Carl yelled a moment too late.
The razor wire sliced past my face at an alarming rate, a couple inches more to the right and my facial features would have been neatly severed from their resting place. I looked up at Carl more in shock than anything.
He shrugged a bit and said, “Eh it didn’t get you did it? Quit your belly aching.”
I didn’t know which was worse, the close call or the smell. I wanted to give Carl a little ‘what for’ but speaking meant that I would have to suck in more of the foul stench-laden air. I flipped him the finger and he laughed, so much for making a statement.
The armory sat on a lot by itself and afforded luxurious views on all sides. The closest homes were across Buckley Avenue and a small greenway lay between the street and the houses. All in all it was about 500 yards away, and it was from there the zombies began to spill forth. At first only a few ambled out, then half a dozen and almost within a blink of an eye there were hundreds. They stood in the greenway, some swaying like abhorrent stalks of corn. Their numbers swelled; standing room became a premium commodity as their numbers increased and still they didn’t move. We lost precious time as the three of us just stood in awe wondering what kind of manifestation we were witnessing. Of course it was at this point that Jen decided to peek her head over the dashboard. The détente was broken by her shrill screams. Like the prince’s kiss to Sleeping Beauty, the noise got the zombies moving and in turn so did we. We had about a hundred and fifty yards of wire that still needed to be loaded into the truck and I was a moment away from having to cut it loose when the zombies made it to the sidewalk. Again they stopped.
“What are they doing? Are they afraid of traffic?” I said aloud.
“Maybe they’re looking for a crosswalk,” Carl snorted.
Of us all he looked the least nonplussed, as if this were just some normal ordinary occurrence. We kept loading the wire, and I kept a wary eye on the zombies waiting for any indication they would make their move. It didn’t happen.
Ben asked me what they were doing as we closed up the rear of the trailer. I wanted to scream at him, ‘How the hell would I know, do I look like a fucking zombie expert you dumb hillbilly illiterate turd!!’ Instead civility got the better of me, and I shrugged. “Hell if I know,” I told him instead.
Jen’s cacophonous voice assaulted all of our ears as soon as we entered the cab. She was somewhere between sobbing and screaming her desire to vacate the premises as soon as possible.
“Oh for the love of God girl, shut up!” Carl said evenly. His words had the desired effect, she shut up almost immediately, although she switched to an almost as bothersome half hiccup, half hushed sob. I think the screaming was better. This was the sound of the defeated.
The truck started on the very first turnover attempt. I was figuring that was good news. At least it wasn’t going to be like those low budget horror slasher flicks, where the heroine either can’t start her car or trips over a nonexistent tree root. Thank God for small favors.
The truck roared to life but we weren’t moving. “Please don’t tell me the transmission isn’t working?” I gave
voice to my concern.
Carl and Ben both turned to me in unison as if on some unseen telepathic command.
“What?” I asked, fear began to mount, a few more seconds of this and I might end up on the floor mat with Jen.
I don’t to this day know how they did it but Ben and Carl, as if it was choreographed, simultaneously looked out the windshield at the same time. I followed the path of their gaze.
Realization dawned. “The gate? You want me to open the gate? Go through the damn thing,” I half yelled. Jen bawled a little louder.
Ben spoke up verbally this time instead of any more unnatural synchronized motions. “I don’t want to take the chance of puncturing the radiator or a tire or having the damn fence hang up underneath. ‘Sides, they’re all across the street.”
I looked at Carl for some sympathy, but didn’t find any.
“That’s what you get for being younger,” he quipped.
“Son of a bitch,” I said as I opened the door and jumped down. Jen immediately reached up and locked the door.
I heard Carl mumble something to her as he undid the latch. The zombies weren’t moving forward but every set of eyes turned to me as I walked towards the gate. I was deeply unnerved. I once had illusions of being a rock star but if this was what it felt like to have all eyes on you, then fame could find a different resting spot. There was jostling in the back as some of the zombies in the rear were trying to gain a better vantage point to see what was on the menu. Not one of them stepped into the street. It was if they were made of wood and the street flowed with lava. I could have most likely recited the Gettysburg address, done a little dance, possibly a crossword puzzle or two and even relieved my aching bladder before the fastest of the zombies could cover the distance to the gate. I swung open the gate and spun back toward the truck. I walked quickly, proud that I hadn’t broken out into a panicked run but it was close. I hopped back up into the cab, thankful the door wasn’t locked, and still nothing stirred, not even a mouse.
As the truck swung on to Buckley Avenue, the zombies’ heads turned in harmony. As we passed, they began to step out onto the street. For the first quarter mile of our trip, zombies began piling out of every imaginable nook and cranny. There had to have been thousands of them as they ganged up behind us. It looked like the beginning of the world’s slowest marathon.
Ben laughed as he said. “The dead sons of bitches aren’t going to catch us!”
“Yeah at least for another seven miles,” came my pensive reply.
Ben’s smile dropped off his face; even the stoic Carl looked like he had eaten something that didn’t sit well. Jen, however, was clueless.
“What….what’s in seven miles?” came her quavering question.
“Home,” I answered, as I looked in the side mirrors.
“Oh God,” Jen groaned.
Except for the occasional gear grind the remainder of the journey home was unremarkable. Each of us in his or her own way was contemplating the reality which had just been driven home, no pun intended.
“Ben, stop,” I said. No response. “Ben, stop this truck!” I yelled a little louder. How Ben was even concentrating on driving, I don’t know, he was so far down deep in thought. Carl nudged him.
“What?” Ben asked, sounding a little irritable.
“Talbot wants you to stop the truck,” Carl said, for which I was grateful. I might have yelled it a little louder than was considered polite if I had to ask for a third time.
Ben shrugged. “Fine,” he muttered. “But I ain’t turnin’ her off.”
“Fine, fine,” I said over the rumble of the engine. “What if we don’t go back?”
Ben and Carl looked at me both with expressions of confusion on their face. I didn’t bother to check Jen. I knew she still had her face buried in her hands.
“We saw those zombies,” I went on to explain. “They’re following us to see where we’re going. If we don’t go home they can’t get to our loved ones.”
Jen sobbed in response.
“Now hold on Talbot, I only saw a bunch of zombies milling about in a street. You can’t for sure say they were following us,” Ben said in reply.
Carl forged on. “And even if they were following us, and I said ‘if,’ what makes you think they can track us to our home. They’re stupid brain-dead flesh eaters!” he yelled. It was the most expression I’d seen out of him all day. He might be trying his best to not look riled, but this development was getting under his feathers.
“You saw Hector and the pliers, they’re not completely brain-dead,” I said evenly.
Carl’s face smoldered. Ben was looking from Carl to me in an attempt to garner some much needed information.
“Who’s Hector and what does a pair of pliers got to do with anything?” Ben asked.
Carl began anew, but not in response to Ben. “That still doesn’t make them Einstein wannabes, or Davy Crockett trail tracker wannabes for that matter.” Carl was going to take some serious persuading.
“Listen Carl,” I directed my dialogue towards him. Where Carl led, Ben would follow. “There’s something different about these zombies.”
Carl arched his eyebrow. “Different how? And what exactly does a zombie act like?”
I spent the next fifteen minutes relating everything I knew about zombies, learned from movies, books and comics. Sure, it was an imperfect argument, how could I possibly make an informed judgment about our fact-based reality when I was using fiction-based perceptions. The only hard facts I could give them were my observations of that woman zombie, the one that had killed Spindler. None of them had been there, my explanations fell on deaf ears.
Carl was of the mind to give me the benefit of the doubt, but I hadn’t given him anything solid enough to leave what was left of his family and friends behind. Without Carl my words fell on the deaf ears of Ben. Jen was no one’s ally.
“I’m sorry, Mike,” Carl said. “The zombies, them I believe in. Hector was just an aberration, some legacy memory. The girl? I think she was a specter of an imagination in overdrive.”
I was pissed. “Carl, I’ll admit, I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my whole life and I went to war. But I’m not a hysterical person. I did not imagine that girl showing me Spindler’s head and nodding. I’m sure she was repaying a favor. That shows intelligence.”
“You’re ‘pretty sure’ Mike, but you’re not absolutely sure,” he fired back.
“Of course I’m not absolutely sure, how the hell could I be, they’re zombies!” Anger filled my voice.
“Maybe they are following us and maybe they’re not. I’m not about to give up the rest of my life on a hunch. And I’d rather be with my family if this is the end than traveling the highways waiting for this truck to run out of gas. Are you so ready to leave your family behind?” he finished.
Those words stung. “If it meant they’d be safe,” I said, although without much conviction.
“Odds are Talbot, some group of flesh eaters are going to find our little haven sooner or later. I’d rather be there to help defend, than up by the Nebraska border,” Carl finished with a softer tone.
I had nothing left to say. He was right and now I felt crummy for arguing against him.
“We good now?” Ben asked. When Carl nodded in agreement, Ben put the truck back in gear. The small heave forward brought forth another small sob from Jen.
I could not help feeling like we were the Pied Pipers of Death as we rolled towards home. Instead of leading rats away, we were leading the zombies to their promised land. This was a funeral procession, of that I had no doubt, whatever Carl thought. The truck had no sooner pulled in to the complex when I hopped off, it was still rolling. I headed out to find Jed. It didn’t take me long. He didn’t usually wander too far off from the clubhouse. I was relieved to see the old fart.
“Welcome back Talbot,” Jed said. I could tell he had some sort of jest to say but when he saw the look of consternation on my face he held his tongue.
> “We’ve got to call an emergency meeting, Jed!” My voice was forced from the adrenaline.
“Now hold on Talbot, it’s getting late and folks have been working hard all day. And that’s not even including the ones that buried their kin, neighbors or friends. They need time to mourn,” Jed finished.
“Jed, I’m not trying to be an ass or an alarmist, but if we don’t have a meeting and real soon, we might be burying a lot more people. I don’t necessarily want the whole population, just essential personnel,” I said.
That got Jed going, he wasn’t thrilled about it, but he would have an assembly together within the hour.
“Thanks Jed, and make sure Alex is one of those essentials,” I told him.
“I’ll try Talbot, but he looked exhausted,” Jed added resignedly.
These are the stories that happened AFTER I left to go to the armory, you don’t even want to know how pissed off I got when I found out.
CHAPTER 13
Justin woke as soon as he heard the front door open. He had always been a light sleeper, and now with the way things were it had only gotten worse. He came upstairs and watched as his father walked off towards the clubhouse in the predawn quiet. He thought about following him, but first off it wasn’t much above five degrees out and he was in shorts and a tank top, and second, if his father wanted him along he would have come and gotten him. Justin’s dad was a former Marine, a strong disciplinarian and an anal compulsive man. If he wanted something done, he was not afraid to tell any of his kids to ‘get it done and get it done now.’ Knowing his dad like he did, Justin always thought it was funny how his father always deferred to his mother. Dad was the boss of the kids and Mom was the boss of Dad. That was the hierarchy. For the most part Mike Talbot had mellowed with age, but when something got him riled, all hell broke loose, and it would take all of Tracy’s calm demeanor to put the genie back in the bottle.