Mark Tufo - 'Til Death Do Us Part

My leg pulled free as the bulker ripped the tread of my boot off. I pulled my legs up before he had a chance to start chewing on the bottom of my foot. The bulker didn’t care that my shoe bottom wasn’t food it tore through it and swallowed it as I watched over my shoulder. I turned back to look at the astonished faces of Azile and Tracy.

“It’s climbing up the front isn’t it?” I asked them without daring to look back.

Azile was nodding furiously.

“Shit.”

“Mike, it’s coming!” BT roared.

“Not sure what you’d have me do, BT!” I replied.

“Here goes nothing,” Azile said. At least that’s what the words looked like as she said them softly to Tracy.

I had pulled up my legs so far that I was nearly horizontal to the windshield. I could hear the top of the hood denting in as the bulker approached. The truck picked up speed as Azile cycled through her gears. I wanted to warn her that we were on a dead end, but it goes back to the superfluous, the truck had to be approaching sixty or seventy miles an hour as Azile slammed on the brakes at nearly the same time the bulker gripped around my ankle.

My fingers felt like they were going to snap off. I had them curled under the lip, my weight plus the bulkers and the drag of the braking was causing excruciating pain in my over-worked digits. The bulker had not been able to get as good a grip as I’m sure he would have wanted; the stuttering of the truck jumping and the inertia caused the zombie to slide down the front of the truck. And still the damned zombie nearly killed me as the truck went up and over the being, my entire body, save two fingers rose into the air from the force. Blood gore and half-digested body parts sprayed out from under the truck. I went to a place in my brain that said it was just the world’s largest ketchup packet, sure filled with, blood, bile, body parts and bones—but ketchup nonetheless. Another forty feet or so and we came to a blissful stop.

It would be an hour before I could completely unfurl my fingers and a few days until the dull ache would stop. I got down off the truck and walked to the passenger door with a noticeable limp due to my sole-less boot rather than any injury. Tracy had moved over so that I could get in.

“Thank you, Azile,” I said as I cradled my hurt hands in my lap.

“I’m sorry, Mike. I wasn’t thinking,” Tracy said, gingerly rubbing my purpling digits.

“Is she talking about when she married him?” BT asked Tommy.

“You want some Ben-Gay Mr. T?” Tommy asked.

I could envision me wiping sweat off my brow while they were coated in the pungent concoction. “I’m good, thanks,” I told him.

Zombies were getting scarce as were truckers, word of Kong’s passing was making the rounds among the remaining men and with their leader and the threats removed they were more interested in saving themselves.

“Time to play the Pied Piper,” I told Azile.

She got the rig turned around, and wasn’t going more than five miles per hour, continually honking her horn, zombies fell in step (or got run over, which was just fine) as we drew them away from Ron’s. Thousands had died over the last couple of days and still thousands remained. We had a few hundred with us, some would stay around the house and need to be dealt with, others would go into stasis and need to be dealt with at a later time, but for now the biggest threat to mankind was dead and I for one wouldn’t miss her.

Azile drove over twenty miles away from the house until she picked up the speed to shake our entourage. I gave her an alternate way back to the house so that the zombies wouldn’t merely turn around and come back.

“What now?” Tracy asked as we barreled down Route 1.

“Mop up duty,” I hoped.

As we pulled on to the street before my father’s I was (we were) wholly unprepared for the scene before us. Hundreds if not thousands of zombies had been destroyed under the heavy wheels of tractor trailers. It was beyond putrid, there was nearly a six-inch layer of compressed zombies on the roadway, so thick I didn’t think a snow plow would be able to sludge them off the roadway. Of all the smells I had encountered thus far during this apocalypse, this couldn’t even be measured it was so far over the top.

I could go into gory detail about how much stomach butter was churned in that cab but I’ll spare you the details. The truck at times slid sideways as we road over the crest of carnage, parts on occasion would be thrust out or particularly large blasts of air would pop as a vital organ was compressed past its limit much like those protective bubbles used for mail.

Zombies milled around Ron’s house, unsure what to do now that they were not being directed or there wasn’t a food supply available but that changed quickly when they saw us coming. I had Azile pull up to the wreckage of the first truck that had tried to make it in to the compound.

“Well shit…was kind of hoping they’d be gone. Let’s play Piper again, then I know a back way we’ll have to hoof it in by,” I told everyone. They weren’t listening much because I had just told them we were going to have to drive back over the horrid highway.

“You kind of suck, man,” BT told me.

“Kind of?” Azile asked.

This time she only went about ten miles out. We got maybe another hundred or so of the slimy bastards to follow before we turned back around. I needed to get home, my stomach was cramping with worry, I had seen no signs of life from the house and I had seen some significant damage too. Everything could be fine and they were all hunkering down comfortably in Ron’s prep shelter or...this was an apocalypse and I had to think of all possibilities.

Where I had Azile pull over was a two mile drive on roadways or about three quarters of a mile by crow flight. And that was about the only way someone should do this trek, was by air. There was a small field on this side but as we progressed onto Ron’s land the foliage would become so thick that to get a sight line of more than five feet would be a rare occurrence, and we were now only armed with sharp pointy objects at the moment.

The field was covered in a low lying fog, of course it was, how else would it be. At least it was penetrable, that was of course until we entered the brush which seemed to grasp onto the ethereal mist like a lover to the blankets on a cold night. The five hoped for feet of range was halved, if anything came at us now we wouldn’t have enough time to act surprised. We tried to keep our noise level to a minimum; mostly muttering as clothes were caught or thorns pushed through to rake against skin. The fog dampened noise and we stopped repeatedly to get our bearing and listen to anything else that might be in there with us.

More than once we heard things crashing through the trees, luckily heading away. The only zombie we stumbled across was one that had been run over through its midsection, its middle had been compressed to no thicker than a ream of paper and its spine must have been completely destroyed because it was bent over at the waist it’s head dangling down uselessly by its knees. I felt a tremor of remorse as I cut through the zombie woman’s neck that was at least until her pale blue eyes looked up from the ground at me with an accusatory glare. I pushed the sword into her mouth and flung the head away, that was not a sight that needed to infiltrate anyone else’s dreams.

Ron’s house was a mess. Smoke was issuing forth from his basement, not enough for me to think it was on fire, more like a swirling of dust settling after an explosion. I swear I could hear Tracy’s heart pounding in unison to my own. Zombies were still around, but we had not been noticed as of yet. We moved further down the tree line so that we could see into the basement. That was not going to be a way of egress. I could see multiple bodies of dead bulkers, some wooden beams and nothing more, it was effectively sealed from outside intrusion. That left the deck which, at ten feet, wasn’t insurmountable; but we still had to all get up it before the speeders noticed us and tried to eat us. That also involved getting to the other side of the house because the decking on this side was pretty much destroyed. I did not think that we would be able to cross over the cleared expanse without being seen.