Mark Tufo - 'Til Death Do Us Part

“What about him?” I asked Mirabelle.

“Hercules? Oh, he’s fine. He’s just a big old teddy bear.” She laughed.

If by teddy bear she meant, psychotic, rabid grizzly then we were in agreement , I thought.

I sat, Hercules growled again—or a fissure had opened up in the earth—I figured both would sound the same.

Luke and John were sitting at the small kitchen table, alternating hits on a Jamaica envious-sized bone.

“Wowee, that’ll make your toes curl and slap a turtle!” Luke said as he leaned back in his chair.

“That’s good stuff, right? Got it from that guy over there,” John said, pointing at me.

“Mister, you want a hit? ‘Sidering it’s yours and all,” Luke asked.

“I’m good,” I told him.

“You want some possum pie?” Mirabelle asked me from the kitchen.

I thought about taking a couple of hits from John’s weed, thinking that would be the only way I would get strong enough munchies to actually try possum pie.

“It’s not really possum,” she said when she saw my face. “We ain’t been able to find them since the zombies came.”

My stomach was roiling a bit. I tried my best to cover up its gurgling sound. I changed the subject away from food in the hopes I wouldn’t have to pretend I was on some hillbilly version of Fear Factor . “Thank you for taking us in.”

“It’s what God-fearing people do,” Mirabelle said. “They help other God-fearing people. Are you God-fearing folk?” she asked.

“Um I don’t really fear him per se . Is a healthy respect okay?” I asked back.

She thought about it for a moment. “I s’pose that’ll do. What brings you folks around this way?”

“We’re trying to get to John’s wife in Philly, then I’m trying to get home,” I told her.

“Without weapons?” she asked astutely.

“We’ve had a few hardships along the way.”

“Fell out of the damn sky!” John shouted after taking another hit.

“Get outta here?” Luke asked incredulously.

“Unfortunately it’s the truth,” I told Mirabelle.

“What is?” John asked.

“You been dealing with him long?” she asked me.

“Long enough.”

“And he hasn’t got you kilt yet?”

“I figure the score is about even. Every time he tries to kill me, he saves me.”

“Hey, Poncho, Luke wants to know if you have any of this killer weed you can sell him?” John asked me as he started to laugh.

“Fresh out, man, check your pockets. I gave you the last of my stuff,” I said as I shrugged to Mirabelle.

“Whoa, man!” John said as he pulled baggies of stuff out of his many pockets. “Thanks, Poncho!”

“Any time,” I told him. “Have you been here the entire time?” I asked Mirabelle, wondering how a trailer could possibly hold up to a zombie invasion.

“We have.” She looked at me a little guiltily. “Our neighbors all either left, were turned, or were kilt. We’ve been foraging from their stuff.”

“There’s no shame in that.”

“Man what’s with the diapers?” John asked Luke.

“Smell of shit keeps the zombies away. They think it’s more of them and don’t want anything to do with us,” Luke answered.

“That’s brilliant,” I said.

“We noticed when the zombies were attacking our neighbors that none really came around here, and the only thing we could think was different was Hercules,” Mirabelle said.

“The dog’s shits are the size of bread loaves, and I ain’t talking those normal sized ones either, I mean those fat-sliced Texas toast ones.”

I didn’t want to tell him that the Texas-sized toast referred to the individual size of the slice not the loaf itself, but I got the visual anyway.

“The dog laid those monsters around the yard like land mines and the zombies really just kind of ignored us. It was Mirabelle’s idea to string some diapers up around the yard as an added precaution.”

She blushed a little, well that answered that question—they didn’t have a child. Better off in this new world…and then I panged for my daughter and my grandbaby that was on the way. It was a horrible time and place in our history to have a baby, but I also couldn’t wait to wrap my arms around the infant and the new hope he or she would deliver.

“You guys ever thought to look for a more secure location?” I asked.

“Why, mister?” Luke asked.

“This is home,” Mirabelle said. “It ain’t much, but it’s what we know. Our neighbors left us just about everything we need and more.”

“Cept for a little of the green,” Luke said, swinging a baggie back and forth in front of his face. “And since Belle found Jesus I don’t need to share.”

Mirabelle threw a dishtowel at Luke’s head which he had no hopes of dodging. “I didn’t ‘find’ Jesus, he was there all along, waiting for me to ‘see’ him,” she said to her wayward husband. “He’s a little rough around the edges, but he treats me good and I love him.”

“My wife would probably say the same thing.” I smiled at her.

“You haven’t been home in a while then?” she asked.

“Seems like a lifetime ago,” I answered vaguely.

“How bad is it?” she asked.

“You were right to stay here, there’s not much good left,” I answered honestly.

“You’re welcome to stay here as long as you’d like. You could both even have your own trailer if you wanted,” Mirabelle said.

I got the feeling she was lonely and frightened, and I couldn’t fault her on either count. “The offer is very much appreciated, but I have to get home. I have a wife, kids, friends, and a dog I need to get back to.” Hercules perked up when I said dog. “You could come with us.” The range of emotions from hope to despair ran across her face, it was like looking at those posters that show pictures of the human face and all the different internal feelings we can emote. “I’ll tell you what, do you have paper and a pen?”

She handed me what I needed.

“Here is our address and a rough map. If you ever have to leave here or just want a new start, you come our way. There probably won’t be possum pie, but we’ll treat you like you’re one of our own.”

“Thank you.” She sobbed a little clutching the piece of paper close to her breast like it was the Word of God. “We can get you a car and some guns.”

“We can’t take those things from you,” I told her.

“We have more of both than we could ever use.”

“Really?”

“Come on, I’ll show you. Luke, we’ll be right back I’m going to get Poncho some supplies.”

“Mike,” I said.

“What?” she asked.

“My name is Mike. John gave me a poncho to wear when we first met and that’s kind of stuck in his head.”

“That’s funny. I thought it was a weird name for a Yankee,” she said.

“I prefer Bostonian.”

“Yankee…Bostonian…same thing isn’t it?”

“Not really.”

She laughed again. “Come on, Herc,” she said to the pony hybrid.

He didn’t need the summons when he saw Mirabelle heading for the door, he was already up and waiting. We walked a couple of trailers over, one of them had a small steel garage that housed two cars.

“We checked ‘em all out these were the two best.”

There was a beautiful Ford Thunderbird; looked like someone had poured a lot of money into its restoration. Its beauty was so overpowering that I barely noticed the thing sitting next to it.

“Wow!” I said as I ran my hand down its side.

“That’s kind of the one we decided to keep,” Mirabelle said. “But this was the second best one,” she said proudly.

A lime green Gremlin stared back at me like some hideous engineering experiment gone wrong. “I can’t catch a break,” I muttered. The thing assailed my vision, even more so because it was next to such a marvel of perfection. It was the old standard just like high school girls; the pretty ones would surround themselves with the Plain Janes who would invariably make them look that much better. It did seem that this was having the opposite effect, though; the beautiful car was making the ugly one that much uglier—all the bubbled glass, and lime green color, the thick set of its body—it almost made me want the Terrible Teal machine back. “It’s wonderful,” I told her thickly, careful not to touch it.