Authors: Mark Tufo
Well, I got the answer to the second part of my question soon enough as Gary moved
into the stream of light radiating out from the front of the truck. It was difficult
to see at first, and to be honest, it took my mind a few seconds to piece it all together.
Over the left side of his chest was a stitched tag like the military would use; the
name ‘Talbot’ clearly marked in white thread. It stood out against the gray possibly
brown material of the jumpsuit. It was the patch on his right arm that gave me the
most difficult time trying to discern. When it did, I nearly fell on my ass laughing
so hard.
“What is it?” Tracy asked, wondering how I could find any humor in the situation we
found ourselves in.
“Gary…” I started trying to get my laughing under control. “He’s…got…a zombie buster’s
patch on!” And then I was howling all over again.
“I told you crackers were crazy!” BT shouted.
Even Tommy, who was almost always dour-faced lately, was smiling.
“Nice outfit, Uncle Gary!” Travis shouted.
“Thanks,” Gary replied, beaming.
“Any chance that’s an old Halloween costume?” Tracy asked me.
“Doubtful,” I told her.
“You know you really should have given me full disclosure about your family before
I married you,” she said.
“We would have never been hitched if that was a prerequisite.”
“I should have put it in a pre-nup,” she said with all seriousness, never taking her
eyes off of Gary.
“How’s it working?” Mad-Jack asked. He had his window rolled down a quarter of the
way.
Gary gave him the thumbs-up. To my way of thinking, if he wasn’t getting eaten, then
it was working.
“Mike, what did you do to my truck?” Ron asked with chagrin from the driver’s seat
of the first truck.
“That not obvious to him?” BT asked me.
“I know, right?” The destroyed remains of ‘said’ truck were pinned on the handrail,
leading up the main steps into the library. And anybody including a casual observer
would note that the thing was destroyed.
I led off with “Ummm,” and then right into a smart-ass comment, “first prize at the
demolition derby was a bucket of fried chicken…seemed like a fair trade.”
“You suck, Mike,” Ron intoned.
“I would have done it for that,” BT replied.
“Yup...definitely a pre-nup. Next time, I suppose.” Tracy shook her head.
“Next time?” But she was already heading away.
“Were there biscuits?” BT asked.
“What?” I didn’t even know what he was referring to.
“The prize, Mike, the damn prize! Did it come with biscuits and gravy?” BT asked,
clearly agitated.
I was shaking my head. “There was no…” BT’s face began to contort to one of anger.
“Err…I was saying there was no mashed potatoes, but tons of biscuits and gravy.” He
relaxed at that point, a smile creeping across his face, his eyes half-closed as he
remembered some past meal. “And I’m the
crazy
one,” I said, making sure that he couldn’t hear me.
“Uncle Gary, you’re going to have to go to your left. There’s a fire escape and the
doorway is on the second floor,” Justin yelled to him.
Gary looked up. I could see the pained expression on his face.
“How heavy is that thing?” I asked him.
“I had to use two car batteries,” Mad Jack replied. “And the case is three-quarter-inch
plywood which Gary made me paint black. Although the weight added from the paint would
be negligible. The components are heavy-duty because I wanted to make sure they would
hold up in a battle scenario, then there’s the—”
“Mad-Jack! Just pounds, man, that’s all I need,” I said to him.
“Well, I usually use the metric system like all scientists, but I’m sure you wouldn’t
understand kilograms.”
“I’m going to kill him,” I said under my breath.
“Okay, let me do the conversion…carry the five…add in the remainder…divide by pi.”
There was a pause. “Roughly a hundred thirty pounds and six ounces. Give or take an
ounce or two.”
“Shit, we didn’t carry that much in the Marines,” I said to anyone close. “You going
to be alright, brother?”
His thumbs-up was much less enthusiastic, and his smile looked more like he had to
take a shit and there wasn’t a toilet for a mile. Oh don’t go turning your nose up,
we’ve all been there.
“Everyone grab your gear. BT, can you take over for Gary when he gets here?” I was
referring to carrying the zombie repellant. I was going to be busy hefting my own
cumbersome bundle. Henry did not like the indignity of being carried. He was fine
with riding or being pulled along in a wagon, but carrying was somehow beyond his
station.
BT nodded, slowly returning from the world of saliva-worthy meals.
“What’s the plan, Mike?” Tracy asked nervously.
“You must be nervous if you even asked,” I told her. “Here it is in a nutshell. Make
sure you’re always within reach of BT.”
“Sounds easy enough,” she said.
“One would think that.” Although I knew from multiple personal experiences that any
battle plan unraveled at first contact with the enemy.
We could hear Gary’s labored breathing and heavy footfalls coming up the stairs. When
he was about halfway up, I realized we were going to have a problem. The zombies already
on the staircase, although being repelled by the machine, had nowhere to go. They
were pressing up closer to the library wall. They didn’t have the wherewithal to jump
over the side; most likely it was a failsafe in them…or just stupidity.
“Gary, hold up!” I shouted, hoping he could hear me through his groans of protestations.
His rendition of Queen’s
We are the Champions
was suffering greatly from his distressed intakes of air. “And keep your head down!”
BT pressed his face up against the small window that overlooked the fire exit. “It’s
never easy.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked him.
“Sick bastard. How is it that you make Deneaux look like a viable traveling companion?”
“That hurts, man.”
The difficulty was going to be compounded because the door opened outward and a good
ten or twelve zombies were huddled up against it. The person or persons pushing the
door open was going to be exposed to the zombies while those behind him would be shooting.
It was not an enviable position.
“Maybe we should have Gary go back down the stairs to ease the pressure,” Tracy suggested.
“Good idea. I hope he can make it back up, though,” I told her. I empathized with
my brother. That thing was like strapping a human on your back, and not a little baby
one.
I was about to tell him when his singing (dare I call it that) cut short and he shouted
out, “MJ, this thing is blinking.”
“What color? Because if it’s a green, that’s alright, just the box doing a self-diagnostic.
Now if it’s yellow that’s still okay, it means the box has detected a problem, but
it’s fairly certain it can self-correct.”
“Fairly fucking certain,” I mumbled. “I’m going to kill him.”
“But if it’s red—” he was continuing.
“It’s red!” Gary replied.
“Um…erm…I would suggest running,” Mad-Jack shouted to him.
BT and I were already heading for the door. Our combined momentum drove some of the
zombies clear off the small landing where I hoped they dashed their skulls against
any hard object below. I had slammed into the door, shoulder first, thinking I wasn’t
going to get much movement, but when the freight train that is BT also crashed into
it, the thing opened easily enough. I found myself falling, the steel grate of the
landing rushing up to meet me. Just where I wanted to be—by the feet of zombies. That’s
sarcasm, although in hindsight, it beat the hell out of being by their mouths.
BT was screaming a war cry. I’d like to think my scream sounded fierce as well, but
mine was more fear driven. I could hear rounds being fired above me. I was on eye
level with a zombie that was in serious need of an anti-fungal medication. Mini brown
cauliflower pustules were erupting from its toenails, and trust me when I tell you,
I was fixated on that. I was deathly afraid it was going to shuffle those growths
right up to my nose. If they touched me, odds were I’d go into shock. I felt hands
wrap around my lower legs, and I kicked out thinking it was zombies.
“Talbot, if you kick me, you’ll be sleeping alone for years,” Tracy told me. She and
Travis yanked me back into the sanctuary of the library.
BT had a good four or five zombies pinned behind the door and the railing. Justin
and Tommy were clearing the few remaining ones away from him. MJ’s machine had done
more than just repel, now the zombies fixated their attention on it. They were in
such a rush to get away from it that they weren’t even bothering with the food literally
a mouth’s span away. Gary had just made the landing as Tommy put a knife I didn’t
know he was carrying straight through the eye socket of the last remaining zombie.
Shooting anything alive is nightmare worthy, but there’s something about a knife that
just ratchets up that gross factor. It’s a much more personal way to dispose of a
life (such as a zombie’s is). The knife easily slid into the soft tissue of the eyeball,
cracking through the delicate orbital bones, and then finally coming to a rest in
its brain. The zombie stilled as its headquarters were breeched. Tommy had a fierce
grimace on his face as he pulled the knife free and kicked the zombie over the rail.
The zombie sailed a good fifteen feet in the air—sometimes I forgot just how strong
Tommy was—before the thing’s forward progress was stopped by a strategically placed
elm. If not for the tree, the zombie may have broken some flight records for his kind.
Even Gary’s panting couldn’t drown out the sickening sounds of shattering bones.
“You alright?” BT asked Gary, not stopping for a response as he physically picked
him up and into the library. Travis grabbed the handle to the door and pulled it shut
before a new wave of zombies heading up the stairs could get in.