Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

“Thank you,” I told her breathlessly as we got to the door.

“If I were fifty years older, I’d marry you,” Gary said, kissing her on the cheek.

“I knew it!” BT shouted. “All white women are crazy!”

Mrs. Deneaux cackled loudly as we mostly carried her to the truck.

“I told you!” Paul said as we all got back in the truck.

“What happened?” Brian asked.

“Mrs. Deneaux is what happened!” I shouted. “She just might be the baddest ass person on the planet right now!”

Brian got the truck moving as a stream of zombies came flooding through the door. “Horrible customer service,” he remarked as we pulled out of the parking lot.

“Not bad,” I told him as I clapped him on the shoulder. My heart rate was finally coming down to something approaching “galloping horse.” A few more minutes, and maybe I’d get it to “hummingbird” status.

“Now what?” Gary asked.

“We find a storage locker facility,” Brian answered.

“Huh?” I asked.

“Storage lockers, I’m telling you they’re gold mines. My cousin does it for a living.”

“Does what, exactly?” I asked, not understanding what the hell he was talking about.

“He used to buy abandoned storage lockers and sell the contents for huge bucks.”

“Great, but I don’t think we really need an old record collection or furniture for that matter,” I told him, more than a little pissed that we had all just risked our lives for this half-assed idea.

“No, Mike, he said he always comes across guns when he does these.”

“Come on, who sticks guns in a storage locker?” I asked. It sounded like the most insane thing I’d ever heard. Sometimes I hated having my rifles in a safe at my own home because that would delay me getting to them. How much of a pain-in-the-ass would it be to tell the home invaders at your house to hold off while you put your shoes on and drive down to the storage facility to retrieve your weapons. I’m sure they’d be super understanding.

“I don’t know. Folks who only want guns for hunting season, or relatives who have passed and the kids stick everything in storage until they can go through it.”

“Or a sporting goods store that’s gone under,” Gary added.

“Maybe we’ll find Harry Potter’s magic wand too.” I said. “I don’t think the risk was worth the return, Brian,” I said, more than a little miffed.

“What do we have to lose?” he replied. “We either find something and punch Eliza in the mouth or we don’t and scramble to catch up with the others.

“Fair enough,” I relented, but I was far from placated. I did not want to go running into the night again with my tail between my legs.

Chapter Five – Mike Journal Entry 4

I found the rows of orange-colored garage doors to be more than a little unsettling. I couldn’t put my finger on it, the uniformity? Great. Was I developing a new phobia? Just what I needed. I did not like the fact that it felt like we were in an alleyway with limited avenues for escape, but I had to admit the zombie apocalypse had passed right by this place.

“See? I told you,” Brian said excitedly, almost as if he were listening to my thoughts.

“Told him what? All I see are garage doors,” BT said. “Mike, this is a waste of time. There are easier ways to go dumpster diving.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Let’s just give it a go. There’re no zombies here and little chance there will be. A small reprieve wouldn’t be so bad.”

BT growled, I don’t think he was seeing it the same way as I did.

“Where do we start?” Gary asked me. It was a daunting task; there had to be at least five hundred lockers spread out on this lot.

Brian went over to the one closest to the gate which we entered through, and with some moderate muscle power, cut through the cheap lock, opened it and looked around. “Zero for one,” he said with some enthusiasm. He grabbed his cutters and walked over to the next unit.

I went to see what was in the unit. It looked like whoever had this particular space had been saving newspapers since the mission to the moon. Yellowing, dry, cracked paper stacked floor to ceiling in most places all the way to the rear of the unit.

“Zero for two,” Brian said, barely peeking into the second unit.

There was one small, white kitchen trash bag full of oven mitts in this one. “Who the hell does that? Spends what? Thirty, forty bucks a month to store oven mitts?” I could see if they came from maybe a defunct oven mitt store, but these were used. Most had grease or burnt food on them; none of them were pristine, and yes, I checked them all. And no, I didn’t touch them, I ripped the bag open and kicked them around, just trying to wrap my head around the person that put these here.

Brian was somewhere around “zero for twenty-two” when he stopped counting.

“Talbot, we’ve been here for three hours. Surely there’s a better way to waste our time. Maybe a museum or something. I’d rather go look at something aesthetically pleasing than rummaging around other people’s shit,” BT griped.

“Whoa! Got something!” Brian shouted from pretty far down the alleyway.

“Holy crap! When did he get that far from us?” I asked. We would have been able to get there sooner, but we had to skirt around mountains of debris that had been pulled from previous lockers.

Brian came out of the locker, holding two giant rifles.

“What the hell are those?” I asked him.

“Firearms,” he said proudly.

“They look like they shoot grenades,” Paul said, looking down the barrel.

“Those are pretty useless,” Mrs. Deneaux said, coming up to us. “They’re smooth bore muzzle loaders, they need black powder, I’d say a .50 cal ball, and have an effective range of about seventy-five yards, at the most. And that drops off significantly, depending on who is shooting the weapon.” She finished off looking directly at Paul, who bowed his head. “Plus, even if we had everything we needed, they take close to two minutes to reload.”

“Brian, I don’t know how much more time we can stay here trying this,” I told him.

“There’s weapons in here. I know there are,” he said with a measure of desperation.

“There probably are, but look at all these lockers! We could spend days here trying to find them,” I told him.

“Leave me someone to watch my back. I’ll keep looking and you guys can try some stores nearby.”

“I’ll stay,” Mrs. Deneaux said, lighting a cigarette.

I looked over to Brian to see what he thought; it was his back that needed watching. “Sure,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Alright, we’ll be back in a couple of hours. If something happens here, go back to the Big 5 store.”

“Got it,” Brian said, already digging into the next locker.

Mrs. Deneaux was sitting on the bumper with her head tilted up, soaking in the sun as much as her lungs soaked in the caustic carcinogens from the cancer sticks.

“Doesn’t much look like she’s watching anyone’s back,” BT said as we walked out of the storage facility.

“We’ve got to get some wheels,” Paul said nervously. “I’m too old to run.”

“Buddy, remember we played on the high school football team together? There was a reason you were the quarterback and not a running back.”

“Not much of a scrambler then?” BT asked Paul.

“You both know what you can do with my ass,” Paul stated.

“Paul, to be fair, I watched a few of your games back then. I think you could beat Dan Marino in a foot race,” Gary said in all seriousness.