The first cocktail was served three hours after I was incarcerated. The guard had the presence of mind to realize that a bottle lofted into the air would have great difficulty finding open ground upon which to shatter and spread its fuel. At one time in his life, the guard had been a pitcher and a Triple A prospect for a minor league team. A drinking problem had nipped any chances of a pro career in the bud. He called upon all his skills to deliver an old Budweiser bottle at ninety-three miles per hour into the unsuspecting skull of a zombie. Ironically, had it been measured it would have been discovered the zombie was sixty feet six inches away. The zombie fell hard, its skull crushed beyond repair, but it had held together long enough to shatter the bottle and let the accelerant spread to seven or eight of his best zombie friends. The effect was immediate. The zombies burned quietly, the crackling of skin and hair reminiscent of a cold winter night and reading a good book curled up on the couch by the roaring hearth. Because of the crowded conditions, the fire rapidly spread among the besiegers, but the desired outcome of disbursement was not what happened. Again, maybe history would have the luxury of discerning the truth, but the immediate was not concerned with the future. Instead of tucking tail and running away, the milling zombies coalesced and began pushing, into the barrier that kept them away from their desired prize. The guards could only watch on with increasing alarm as the first couple of rows of zombies were quite literally pressed into nonexistence from the pressures being exerted on them. Zombies were erupting like eggs left too long in a microwave. Sheets of viscous bodily fluids flew high in the air. Nearby personnel were covered in the gore; more than one lost their respective lunches.
Between the crushing force of the zombies and the retaining wall, something had to give. Reinforcement two by fours creaked and groaned under the added pressure, and cracks began to manifest near knotholes. Boards began to pop with the sound as loud as rifle shots, first one and then a cacophony of explosions. Guns fired wildly trying to stem the tide of the onslaught, but like trying to bale water out of a sinking ship with a thimble, it was too late. Many realizing the end was near took off for their homes. Some stood in shock watching as hairline fissures began to form in the seemingly indestructible wall before them. Some of the residents rallied together, the air trembled with the cumulative shots being fired. The effect was like one continuous clap of thunder.
CHAPTER 24
Journal Entry - 21
I had been dreaming a particularly vivid dream before I was so rudely interrupted. The sound of booming thunder had cut through all semblances of sleep. I had no sooner come to full consciousness when the klaxon of alarm erupted. All hell was breaking loose, although at the time I had no idea how close to reality I was. I was trying my best to look out the window and find the source of the clamor, but the angle wasn’t right. Unless the problem was in the pool I wasn’t going to find out much information this way.
“Talbot, get your ass over here!” Jed was yelling from the locked door, fumbling frantically with the keys trying to find the right one.
Flashbacks of every horror movie I had ever seen ran through my mind. You know the part where the person that is about to die fumbles with his or her keys, giving the monster in the flick the needed time to catch up with and dispatch the lowest paid actor in the movie. As I neared the door I could see the tremors in Jed’s hands, and this wasn’t the advancing age palsy either; this was the full-blown San Andreas type.
“Jed, take a deep breath, breathe for a sec,” I said to him, trying to instill a calm in him that I wasn’t even feeling, and I wasn’t even sure what was going on. Jed looked up at me, and my heart sank. His face couldn’t even be considered ashen, transparent was a better descriptive, I could see every blue vein perfectly etched in his features.
“Jed, what’s going on?” I asked in alarm.
“The end Talbot, the end,” he answered sadly.
I had never seen him so resigned. I wasn’t so sure now that I wanted him to open that door, maybe I could just ride it out right here. That was an option I didn’t have the luxury of exploring. The lock rattled open, and Jed jerked the door open.
“Get home Talbot,” Jed said without much inflection. Jed might not be a zombie, but he was dying inside.
“What about the trial?” I had to ask. I didn’t want attempted escape added to my offenses.
“I don’t think there’ll be enough people left in a couple of hours to worry about that,” Jed said, his shoulders slumping even further.
“Oh shit, Jed, it’s that bad?” I asked as I felt my heart drop.
“The wall has been breached in at least a dozen places. If you don’t get out of here and home now you’ll spend your last time on earth with him,” Jed said as he pointed to the far corner of the rec room slash converted cell where a drugged Durgan was recovering from the ad hoc surgery done on his shattered knee.
Sometime while I had been sleeping, Durgan had been wheeled in on a gurney. It was clear that he was not getting anywhere soon under his own volition. It was also clear, to me at least, that I couldn’t leave him. Yes, he was a murdering scumbag who had personally threatened to kill me and would have carried out his plan if given the opportunity, but even then I couldn’t just leave him. I looked longingly over Jed’s shoulder and the way out and back towards Durgan and the Christian-like thing to do. Who was I kidding, I wasn’t even a practicing worshipper. I was more like a pretend worshipper. I couldn’t even do what the vast majority of other pretenders did and go to church on Christmas Eve. Despite all that, I still went back to get Durgan. He jerked awake as I disengaged the foot brake on his gurney. His murderous black eyes quickly lost their postoperative haze and locked onto mine.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he mumbled. Even half asleep he was an asshole.
“Getting you out of here, the zombies have gotten into the complex,” I hastily explained.
A small smile curved across his lips. He was pulling out of his stupor by leaps and bounds. I was halfway across the room pushing the gurney when Durgan spoke.
“You know I’ll kill you the first chance I get right?”
“We’ve already been through this, why don’t you give it a rest.”
That seemed to piss him off to no end. Durgan’s body had been reduced to a shell of its previous self, but this was something that his mind had not yet grasped. He was a bully in the truest nature of the word and was ALWAYS used to getting what he wanted, how he wanted it, when he wanted it. Physical intimidation wasn’t just a means to an end for him, it was a lifestyle, so what issued forth next was pretty much par for the course for him.
“And then when I’m done with you, I’ll kill every one you’re close too,” he said as he croaked out a laugh, his throat unnaturally dry from the anesthesia.
I didn’t even respond, I took my hands off the gurney, walked past Durgan and out the door.
“Wait, where you going?” Durgan yelled. “I was kidding, you can’t leave me here. Wait!” he screamed in fear for maybe the first time in his life.
“You’re an idiot,” Jed said to Durgan as he pulled the door shut and locked it.
“Old man, you can’t leave me here.”
“Son, if I were so inclined to help you, which I’m not, I don’t have the strength to push what’s left of you out of here. Your best chance of survival just walked through this door. And to be honest, I’m glad you opened that big mouth of yours because if you hadn’t, and Talbot had tried to save your worthless life, he might’ve lost his in the effort. There would have been no justice in that.” Jed walked away, not feeling bad in the least as Durgan’s insults faded away into blubbering incoherence.
“Fuck me,” was all I could think to say as I walked out of the clubhouse.
Zombies were everywhere. Some of the townhomes were on fire. I would later learn it was from the zombies that had been firebombed. The few residents of Little Turtle that weren’t hunkered up in their homes were running for their lives, most without much succ
ess. Ravenous zombies were making short work of their unlucky catches. More than one victim would be busy looking over his or her shoulder at their pursuer only to run headlong into the loving arms of another zombie. I stared in fascinated horror as I watched what was once a guard (I could only tell by the uniform) literally have his face peeled off. The zombie had grabbed a piece of the guard’s chin in its teeth and pulled straight up. By some sheer witless luck his entire face had come off as neatly as a banana peel. The muscles underneath contorted into a scream but were cut short as another zombie ripped out his Adam’s apple. The ragged hole in the man’s neck leeched off what would have been an earsplitting shriek. Blood flowed freely from the faceless man’s eyes. My mind was in denial. It looked more like special effects in a low budget movie. I could not recognize what was happening as truth. This was an impossibility. People don’t get their faces ripped off. This wasn’t Silence of the Lambs. The guard’s eyes locked on mine, which brought me back to the here and now. I would later convince myself that in that state, the man was not capable of higher cerebral thought; he had to be in shock. But in that moment I was sure that he knew who he was, what was happening and what was about to transpire. The moment was broken when another zombie stepped between our line of sight and honed in on its after dinner parfait, me.
‘Run!’ my mind screamed. I obliged. I had to pull out all of my high school football running back moves. At 43 years old I was lucky not to pull anything else. For every zombie I dodged, two took its place. I figured at this geometric rate I would have to get by 64,000 of them by the time I got to my front door. This was not going to be easy. To my right the remnants of the wall were being pushed over as the main body of zombies fought to get their fair share of fresh meat. None of them wanted to be late for the party. I was twenty-five or so yards from the front of my house when I realized I would never have enough time to knock and convince who was ever on the other side to open the door before I was swarmed over. And my moments of having enough maneuverability were rapidly diminishing.
“Mom!” I heard a familiar voice yelling. “Dad’s coming!” Justin had been watching the front of the house and Travis had been watching the back just in case something like this happened.
Within seconds gunfire erupted from the upstairs windows as Justin, Travis and Brendon opened fire, widening a hole for me that I could have driven a truck through. I would have liked to have sauntered up to the front door like I was John Wayne, but I was scared shitless. Tracy had opened the front door and the security door and was yelling at me to hurry up.
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled back with what breath I had left. “What makes you think I need any incentive?”
Paul had stepped onto the front stoop and was covering my entrance. I dove through the front door like the hounds of hell were on my heels. The move was unnecessary; there wasn’t a zombie within fifteen feet of me. I stood up, dusted myself off and tried to act as nonchalant as possible. Tracy calmly locked the security door, not having any of the jitters she had experienced the last time she faced zombies in her yard.
The front door slammed shut just as the boys finished their barrage from above. In the ensuing quiet I heard the roar of the semi as the engine turned over. Someone was making a run for it. I silently wished them good luck and was despondent that I wouldn’t have the chance to get my family on that rig.
“Dude, it’s good to see you,” Paul said enthusiastically.
“You and me both, brother,” I said as I hugged him.
The boys made their way noisily down the stairs to greet me.
“Thank you boys,” I said as I grabbed Tracy and gave her a hug. She uncharacteristically hugged me back.
“Did you escape?” Travis asked.
I disengaged from Tracy, happy to be home. “No, Jed let me out.” I caught them up quickly about what I had been doing, although there wasn’t much to say. I had been sleeping for most of it. Travis told me about the Molotov cocktails.
“Yeah that didn’t work out so well,” I said. Tracy looked at me quizzically. “That must be why some of the townhomes are on fire.”
Now her expression turned to one of alarm.
“Boys, go back upstairs, make sure that no burning zombies get within fifty feet of our row of houses.”
Tommy came up from the basement. “Hey Mrs. T, all the water is upstairs now.” He grinned one of his signature smiles and waved enthusiastically at me. “Hey Mr. T,” and then followed the other boys upstairs.
“Well that wasn’t much of greeting,” I mused.
“He knew you were coming,” Tracy said matter-of-factly. “He’s the reason I had the boys at the windows looking for you. I don’t know if I would have thought to do that. I was pretty much in panic mode.”
“Ryan?” I asked, wondering if it had been Tommy’s spiritual guide that wrapped itself in the guise of television celebrity Ryan Seacrest.
“No,” Tracy said shaking her head. “Bear.”
I looked at her confused.
She shrugged. “Don’t look at me, Tommy said Bear could smell you coming.”
I knew I reeked a little bit, but there was no way that dog could pick my mellow funk out over all the odiferous odors that were pervading our atmosphere at the moment. I was going to let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak. With Tommy there was a good chance I’d never understand what was happening. All I knew was the big lovable kid was a Godsend to have around.
“What now, Talbot?” Tracy asked me. She was starting to get that look of defeatism that I had last seen Jed wearing.
“It’s not over yet, Hon,” I countered to her gloomy outlook. “We’re all safe, we have enough food and water to last three months or so.” I hoped that was enough to raise her attitude. She gave a dispirited nod of the head, apparently not.
“And then? You saw them Mike. They won’t leave. They have all the time in the world.
“I have a plan,” I said. That noticeably improved her outlook.
Unfortunately that was lie, not an out and out lie, more like a stretching of the truth. I had the outline of a plan, more of a plan per se. And it wasn’t so much a plan as an unformulated idea. In reality it was a last ditch effort which I put our odds of pulling off at a 1 in 3 chance and by 3, I mean 99.
“I don’t believe you,” Tracy said, but she hugged me fiercely. “But I love you for that lie.”
That was a first. I had never had a woman ever, EVER thank me for lying to her. Chalk one up for the good guys!
It snowed that night, if not for our locale I would have called it a Nor’easter like back home in Boston. The snow thankfully blanketed out the few remaining zombies who were still human roman candles, and it also had the added benefit of muffling the screams of the few remaining Little Turtle inhabitants. There were still some holdouts yelling out of their windows looking for anyone else that might be alive, but I didn’t see the advantage in yelling back to them. They couldn’t get to us and we couldn’t get to them. All it could possibly do was bring further attention to us. Once the fire danger had ebbed, I had everyone in the house help with covering the doors and windows with plastic. Mostly it was trash bags but I also had some of that shrink-wrap film that is supposed to help with energy costs. The power had stopped about an hour after the zombies had broke through. I wanted to be able to preserve as much heat in our house as possible and I also was hoping the plastic would keep the smell of us away from the zombies. Did it work? I don’t know, that had mixed results, they weren’t rushing the house but they weren’t leaving either. My thought was that they still had the memory of us being here. I know it sounds crazy, but these also weren’t the mindless zombies we’d watched in the movies either, they had rudimentary skills.
We spent most of the next day in my office, which had been converted into Nicole and Brendon’s sleeping quarters. The window had been covered with a green trash bag and no light seeped in. This also had the added benefit of not letting any light seep out. So between me, Tracy, Nicole, Brendon,
Justin, Travis, Tommy, Paul, Erin, Henry, Bear and half a dozen candles the room was toasty and downright stinky. Henry was ripping farts like there was no tomorrow. Maybe he knew something we didn’t. Even Bear was doing his best to keep his nose under the covers and away from the odoriferousness that emanated from Henry. Henry seemed blissfully ignorant of the whole affair as he slumbered through our protests. A couple of times I was fearful the natural gas would blaze and we’d have a blue fireball spiraling through the room. I was considering sleep, there wasn’t much else to do, when Erin started to talk.
“Do you think they can starve?” she asked out loud, to nobody in particular and anyone who might be willing to answer.
I had been thinking about this but hadn’t had enough time to just sit and contemplate until now, at least. Nearly everyone in the room had been either dozing or in the process of doing so, but when I answered Erin, eyes began to open. I had a captive audience. What can I say.
“I think, now this is just my opinion,” I clarified. Erin nodded. “I think they are alive, they are not the living dead like we think they are. Whatever has these people acting the way they are, whether it’s a virus or a germ, a parasite or a damn alien, they are alive. I haven’t seen any zombies that looked like they clawed their way up through a grave. And judging by the stains in most of the zombies’ pants they still have their digestive processes going on.” Nobody, and I mean nobody wanted clarification on what was being digested, that was to remain unspoken.
“Dad, what about the wounds some of them have?” Nicole asked. “I mean I’ve seen some of them with their chests blown open and half their faces missing.” She shuddered.