Mark Tufo - 'Til Death Do Us Part

“You’re still a vampire right?” I asked him.

“I am.” He let his head drop.

“Why now the change back to this ‘Tommy’ persona? How can I ever trust or believe you, if I ever even care again?”

“I took on a large part of my sister when she turned me. With her influence gone, I’m more the boy you remember.”

“I wish I could believe that…I do…for my family.”

I watched as zombies burned by the hundreds. With some effort, I was able to walk down towards one of the pyres. I should have been close enough for my skin to be melting, and still I quaked in the unoccupied recesses of my mind.

“You alright, Mike?” Ron asked a good fifteen feet behind me. I turned to see his hands shielding his face from the intense heat.

I waved him away, not because I was concerned for his safety, but rather, I wanted to be alone. I wondered if I would feel anything if I walked just a few more feet into the intense blaze.

Tommy stepped up beside me. “The shaman did it.”

I didn’t say anything. I realized that at one time I would have had an answer for him, something revolving around, ‘Sure now all we need is some peyote, a shaman and sweat lodge and we’ll be all set.’

“We have a witch,” Tommy said, filling in the gaps in the conversation.

I turned and we walked back towards the house. Travis was watching me as I entered.

I went to BT’s room. “Good news, buddy.”

“They discovered a cure for sarcasm?” he answered.

“Better…road trip,” I told him.

“You’re kidding, right? You’re not, are you? Fuck…why? This is about the Jeep isn’t it? You want to go back and get your fucking Jeep! No, Mike I’m not traveling across the damn zombie infested country for a damn Jeep I won’t do it!”

I’ll admit that thought had crossed my mind, but even I wasn’t that nuts, although if our travels brought us anywhere near Colorado I was going to snag it.

“No, my friend, we need to find Doc Baker,” I told him.

“Oh, man, you know he’s probably dead,” BT said.

“I asked Tommy, he said he wasn’t.”

“And you believe the Edward wannabe?”

“Who?” I asked.

“Nothing, it was a character in a book I read before all this shit happened.”

“We need the Doc, BT.”

“Need? Why who’s dying?”

I kept staring not saying anything.

“Oh shit, it’s me isn’t it? Dammit, I finally get to rest my damn body and now we got to go gallivanting all over the damn place again.” BT put his shoes on.

I walked out in to the hallway. “Boys!”

“Not a chance, Talbot, not unless I’m coming with you,” Tracy said.

“Are you friggen clairvoyant?” I asked her.

“No, you’re just transparent.”

“I would like to go to,” Azile said, raising her hand slightly above her head.

“Fine…pack up. Travis, keep an eye on your uncle, I’m going to see if I can get in his closet trap door.”

EPILOGUE

Mrs. Deneaux watched from the truck cab as Tracy plunged the knife into Eliza’s chest. “Didn’t see that coming.” She said making sure to keep low and not attract any attention. She regretted her decision now to leave the Talbot household, once again she would be on her own. She wasn’t overly concerned because she did what all survivors did, she survived. She waited for another three days in that cab, living off the stores the driver had left behind, it wasn’t much but it was more than her and her boyfriend had when he had got them lost hiking the Ozark Mountains some forty years previous. At one point during the ordeal she had thought about killing him so she could feed. Luckily for Baxter he had redeemed himself the following morning by trapping a rabbit which they had shared over a small fire.

With no zombies in sight, Mrs. Deneaux left the confines of the truck cab, she stepped down onto the pavement, took care of some pressing matters. She then unhitched the trailer, got back in and started the rig up. Even she had to laugh at the irony of it all as she drove off into the sunset.

THE KISS

“Why me?” I begged. Her silence only confounded my bewilderment. “I can’t.”

The thin wisp of what some may construe as a smile vanished. As her arm came back down, I could feel the reneging of the offer. She approached slowly. I was going from freedom to food. My brain screamed for flight, the fight portion was nonexistent. This was no battle of wills, I was helpless, like a fear-frozen marmot I waited for the screaming eagle to descend and sink its claws deep into my flesh. I did not even have enough control to close my eyes. I watched in increasing horror as she approached; death would not be swift. My bladder burned to be released. I was denied even that last suffrage of indignity. A fly crawled into her nose. She paid it no more attention than the lice that swung freely from her dirty matted hair. A beetle plowed its way through a small hole in her neck holding a small nugget of meat, a trophy garnered from who knows where. The only thing still working was my olfactory sensors. This had to have been done on purpose. Gorge tried in vain to roar up and out of my stomach. The fetid odor was so palpable, I could see it, I could taste it. Like Campbell’s soup, it was so thick I could eat it with a fork. Yeah, she hadn’t cut off my sense of sarcasm either. Thin strips of flesh which used to be lips parted, revealing black cracked teeth from which strings of meat hung in decaying strands. Her charcoal gray tongue flicked over them, attempting to pull away some of the tastier morsels. She stood toe-to-toe with me, not six inches from my face. Sweat coursed down my body. I shook from impotence and then that stilled. I wouldn’t die fighting, but at least I’d be standing, small consolation. It’s like ‘winning’ a participation trophy in Little League baseball. Who gives a shit.

What would it feel like to have your face ripped open? Would she still my pain centers? Doubtful. I couldn’t tell much from her near-frozen features, but still I sensed that she was taking some form of perverse satisfaction from these events. She moved in closer; I would have offered her a mint if I had one. My eyes still were not allowed to close. My vision of her blurred as she moved in even closer. A fly landed on my eyeball. It was singularly up to this point in my life, the most disgusting thing that had ever happened to me. Then my zombie girl topped it, she kissed me. My innards roiled in protest, my guts churned like a washing machine on spin cycle. If I wasn’t allowed output through my intake or outlet valves this was going to blow a hole through my midsection a la Ripley’s Alien. The kiss was not so surprisingly, very cold, but very surprisingly tender. It was literally the kiss of death from the dead. It doesn’t get much more ironic than that, does it? A Brillo pad wrapped around coarse grit sandpaper applied at a hundred and ninety revolutions per minute under skin-scalding hot water would never allow me to feel clean again. I was tainted, for fuck’s sake a zombie is kissing me. Didn’t she get my bio? I’m a card-carrying germaphobe!

As she slowly pulled away, a dark viscous fluid kept us tenuously connected. The fly finally descended from my eye to land on this small bridge. Her tongue shot out, incredibly long, and pulled the fly into her canines. I swear I could hear the small crunching of its delicate exoskeleton. The spin cycle was in full throttle. A whoosh of haunted air escaped her lips. She was laughing, she had known exactly what she had done and she found humor in her dark actions. She pulled back another foot and let loose her controls. I fell to the ground, afflicted with crippling cramps. I rolled into a protective fetal position hugging my midsection. Mount Vesuvius erupted. Hot refuse steamed on the cold ground; the whoosh of air which accompanied her amusement persisted. Glad I could be her entertainment. For long minutes I alternated between evacuating my stomach and pulling in long, cold drags of air. How long this happened, I’m not sure. The pain lessened minutely—small fractions of degrees is the best way I can explain it. Each breath was better than the previous but only in infinitesimally small measures. It might have been minutes or days, all reference to time was lost, although my cheek touching the ground was rapidly becoming cold and my refused refuse was not steaming anymore.