Mark Tufo - 'Til Death Do Us Part

“Till death do we part, bitch!” Tracy said as she twisted the knife.

The confusion and pain that were etched in Eliza’s feature were quickly replaced by relief as she realized her unnaturally long life was coming to an end and then to sheer terror as Eliza glimpsed what her afterlife would entail.

“It appears that eternity is not quite as long as you would have believed.” An evil voice said as it drifted up from and through the ground

Tomas fell to his knees, shrieks of pain and loss in his voice. The shaman smiled sadly at Azile and walked towards a rhythmic drumming that only he could hear.

BT turned his sore and battered body over enough to witness the entire event, the first thing that came to his mind was to sing a line from one of his favorite childhood movies. “Ding Dong. The wicked witch is dead.” He said before laying his aching head back down.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Mike Journal Entry 20

I was shattered.

I felt like a mirror image of Humpty Dumpty, so when I fell, my eggshell and my reflection were destroyed. I felt arms around me, I could hear bedlam, men were screaming, shots were being fired and I was slowly rising to consciousness. I was in the arms of the trucker Kong who was rushing to get me to a rig. I could see zombies running towards us as we ran, or at least he ran. BT was cradled in Tommy’s hands, parts of BT did not look to be moving, but I was having great difficulty focusing on anything as we bobbed.

I came up from the depths of unconsciousness, a killer headache worthy of a twelve-pack of cheap beer hangover thrumming through my temples. I saw Tracy and Azile in the sleeper behind me, they seemed to be constructing a makeshift sling for BT. Tommy had put my seat belt on as I kept finding myself pooling on the floor of the cab.

“Fucking zombies, now we’ll show them!” Kong laughed as he pulled on his horn. Even the deep throated bass of his truck horn could do little more for me than allow me to make the pitchfork sign of rockers everywhere.

The truck bounced around as Kong did his best to make zombies an integral part of the roadway system. With the passing of Eliza, her vials and the safety they offered were removed. Truckers that were slow to recognize this often found themselves under the assault of multiple zombies. The zombies that had been single-mindedly attacking Ron’s house relentlessly now pulled back when they saw no signs of food. Speeders and bulkers attacked the retreating truckers ferociously.

As I slowly came back to the world of air breathers, I got the sense that the only thing keeping the rest of the men from bolting was Kong and his threats of retribution if they ran.

The man was nuts, probably more so than me. The trucks were making short work of the zombies that dared come out, but they weren’t quite as clueless as we hoped, more and more of them would wait by the edges of the road where the trucks could not get and would only attack when the truck had to slow down and turn around or open the windows to fire rounds. I witnessed at least one trucker get pulled from his truck, I would have sworn that the zombie pulled the door handle, yet I was holding out hope that my oxygen starved mind had maybe missed a detail or two. I still locked my door though.

“Shit,” Kong said as he pulled his pistol in. “Out of rounds. I miss my wife,” he said to no one in particular. “Do you think she still loves me?” he turned to asked Tracy. “I’ve done some things.” Whether looking for forgiveness from my wife or a higher power I didn’t know. “There’s a duffel bag in the compartment over your head could you get that for me?”

With some effort she handed it past Tommy. Kong put the bag on his lap with a loud clang, he unzipped it, metal shone as he did so.

“Big ComiCon fan are you?” I asked him as I looked down at a satchel of swords and large knives.

“This isn’t that reproduction shit, this stuff is real,” Kong said, digging around through the contents.

“What are you going to do with them?” I had an idea I just didn’t want to be right.

“I should’ve been a better man. When others around me were weak, I succumbed. Instead of helping, I made things worse…in most cases much worse. Well today that changes, today I go out a better man, hoping that God and my wife can find it in their hearts to...”

He didn’t finish as he opened his door, a large two-handed broad sword slashing back and forth violently. Blood spray coated the windshield and driver’s side door as he hacked off body parts with no more effort than a band saw would have going through balsa wood. Arms flopped to the ground, heads rolled away. Once or twice I saw him cut down zombies at the knees, but he was tiring and the zombies were just getting started.

“Help him,” Tracy said in alarm.

“He wants to die, is that what you want me to help him do?” I asked her.

“He helped kill Eliza and he saved your life.”

“Are we forgetting the little detail of why he was here to begin with?” I asked.

“Fine, I’ll do it,” she said, making a move to come up front. “In the end he did what was right.”

And the truly fucking scary part is, for a moment, I almost told her ‘go ahead, I won’t stop you’ and would have meant it. I reached over into the bag and grabbed two swords; they were smaller than the behemoth Kong was swinging.

“When the fuck did you become a Ninja?” BT asked as he sat up with a grimace of pain.

“Online correspondence classes,” I told him as I opened my door.

“Be careful,” Tracy threw out there at the last moment.

If you were about to immerse yourself among blood-thirsty zombies armed with only two swords, would you need the caveat to ‘be careful’ added in, or would that just be a given? Would we have needed to start telling electricians working on downed power lines while standing knee deep in flood water to ‘be careful’ or would they just get it?

I hopped down, zombies started to coalesce. I moved away from the truck so that I would have the ability to swing my swords. The steel jumped in my hands as it made bone jarring contact; I now understood the reasoning behind Kong’s heavier instrument of destruction. I felt diminished from Eliza’s death, but I was still stronger than an average man. I was keeping the zombies at bay with a modicum of work. My efforts were for naught as I fought for inches to get over to Kong’s side. I was halfway past the grill of the truck when I heard him fall; it was more of a cry of thanks than pain.

With the smell of blood, the zombies were momentarily pulled away from me. I hacked indiscriminately. Backs flayed open as I severed spinal columns, zombies hunched over as I cut through their powerful back muscles and they lost support. I almost dropped my swords when the powerful blatting of the truck horn sounded. I looked up to see Tracy frantically pointing behind me. Bulkers were bearing down, a herd of stampeding water buffalo would have been a more welcome sight. I would not make it back to my door, or Kong’s for that matter, not unless I could cut through the swarm that was eating him in time.

I stepped up onto the bumper and onto the hood as the first of the big zombies rocked the rig. I nearly lost my balance until I dropped a sword and reached out to grab a windshield wiper. Bulker hands were reaching up and trying to seek purchase on any part of me so they could drag me down among them.

“Hold tight!” Azile screamed as she took over Kong’s former seat.

Again with the superfluous cautions. I reluctantly let go of my remaining weapon and gripped the lip of the hood. The truck bucked as Azile put it in drive and was trying to pull away from the carnage. A bulker had somehow got up on the bumper and was chewing vigorously through the sole of my boot. My leg was whipping back and forth as the monster shook its mouth trying to get a tasty tidbit free. I repeatedly kicked at its head with my free foot; it couldn’t have cared less as I slammed the side of its head.