Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

“Talbot?” BT whispered from the end of the hallway.

I threw an A-OK sign over my shoulder although it really meant shit. Something bad happened here, even above and beyond what you might think in this situation. I kicked what I figured were a man’s legs judging by the clodhopper boots he (it) was wearing. No movement yet, I waited a few ticks more, making sure this wasn’t the newest brand of sleeper we’d been encountering more and more of. I moved in a half step further, my foot coming down on the hardened rug--the blood, barbecue sauce, and ketchup having completely dried. “Keep telling yourself that, Talbot,” I said as my foot sunk into the sticky fibers.

I turned the corner into the bedroom, wholly unprepared for what I witnessed. God had died, pure and simple. Dad had blown the left side of his head completely off. It looked so clean, like it was one of the cut-aways you used to see at the doctor’s office. “Here, kiddies, is what the inside of your brain looks like when you place a high velocity round up and through the soft palate. See the separation in tissue as the bullet travels through the jelly-like material of your thoughts?” But this was just the beginning of the nightmare.

Across the room lay a crib. I said a silent prayer to a silent master, and all I received was a silent response. A small, blue fist reached up, the fingers not yet deft enough to do much more than clench and unclench in an unending struggle to reach a food source it could not attain. I glided across the room like I was on a moving walkway.

“Whaddaya got, buddy?” a nervous Paul asked. I could hear him approaching.

“If you value anything that resembles sleep for the rest of your days on this planet, Paul, do not come any closer,” I told him. I would swear I could hear his boots screeching in the carpet in an attempt to halt his forward momentum even faster.

“It’s a kid, right?” BT asked. “Aw, man, it has to be a kid. Is the kid dead, Mike? Did the dad eat it? This is horrible. Let’s get out of here, man,” BT said, very subdued.

The baby, an infant of maybe four or five months, was emaciated. Small bits of one of his parents lay scattered around him, but this thing hadn’t eaten anything more than some errant bugs since December. Its eyes, which seemed sallow and sunken, snapped open when it saw me leaning over its small bed. One small tooth poked through the upper gum. It must have latched on for dear life to be able to break through skin on whichever unlucky parent it had gotten a hold of. It began to rock back and forth, trying to get closer to me, strange gurgling noises bubbling forth from its lungs.

“What is that?” BT cried. “The kid is alive?” I could hear BT coming.

“It’s not alive,” I said flatly, my eyes fixated on the baby’s.

“I…heard…him,” BT said haltingly. “Oh sweet, sweet Jesus,” he finished when he realized what I was in the room with.

A feeling of intense hunger raked across my head, but that was the furthest thing from my mind . But not the mind of the one you’re looking at my subconscious piped in. “ HUUUUUNNNNNNGGGGGRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” it said, latching on to the word I had associated with its feelings. Apparently, it was a two-way street. “ HUNGRY! ” it shrieked over and over. I blew four holes into its head before the echoing in my brain subsided.

BT was in the room within seconds, picking me up under my arms and pulling me out of there.

“It was talking to me,” I kept mumbling, long after BT had deposited me on the curb outside.

“You alright, brother?” Gary asked, sitting down next to me.

“I don’t think I even know what that word means anymore, Gary.”

“Bad in there?” he asked earnestly.

I was half a beat away from coming back with a sarcastic, “You think?” But why prove how much of a dick I already am? He was just trying to help.

“Got some guns,” BT yelled from somewhere in the house.

I knew in the grand scheme of things that was good news, but it did little to part the veil that I felt had slipped between my eyes and the rest of the world.

Gary got up. “Any ammo?” he yelled.

“Some,” Paul yelled out an upstairs window.

“Do you think God is getting me back?” I asked Gary.

“Huh?” he asked, trying to figure out what I was asking. “What would God be trying to get you back for?”

“I’m not sure I’ve been a great person, Gary.”

“We all have things we’re not proud of, Mike,” he said, turning back towards me.

“Did you ever chase Bible-thumpers off your property?” I asked him.

“Um no, but now I’m intrigued.”

“It was a Saturday morning, couldn’t have been much past nine a.m. and I had drunk to my liver’s content the night before.”

“Hung over then?”

“Understatement. I think I was still drunk.”

“Eww, that’s rough.”

“Tell me about it. Tracy and I had actually gotten into a good-sized fight the night before, something or other about me being drunk.”

“Go figure,” Gary said.

“I know, right?!” I responded, thinking he was agreeing with me, (but now that I’m writing this, I think he was actually coming down on her side.) “So I’m in bed, sleeping my drink off when the doorbell rings. I threw my arm over to the other side of the bed, looking for Tracy to answer the door, but she had already left with the kids to do some errands. I figured it might be some of the kids’ friends and they would get the message when I didn’t answer the door. So I shut my eyes, and not ten seconds later, they rang the doorbell two quick times.”

“What were they thinking?” Gary asked.

“I know, right?!” I was still under the impression he was siding with me, but looking at his written response takes on a whole new meaning. “So I’m in bed and thinking the little shits have one more chance at redemption before the wrath of God comes thundering down the stairs and gives them what for. I shut my eyes again against the hurtful rays of the sun, peeking around the shades. Another two blasts on the doorbell.”

“Kind of like the bells of Notre Dame.”

“Are you giving me shit, Gary?” I honestly asked because he was so dry in his delivery, I couldn’t tell. He shook his head vigorously. “But yeah, it kinda was like those bells, my head was splitting, my vision was blurry, I had to piss like a race horse, and my stomach felt like I had drunk a pint of bacon grease after eating chili dogs.”

“That doesn’t sound too good, Mike.” Gary said, starting to look a little green-tinged.

“Sorry, brother.” I had to remember Gary did not have the strongest stomach.

Go on, he motioned with one hand; he kept the other up close to his mouth.

So I ripped the door open, my gaze downward, expecting to yell at some little puissant about bothering grown-ups on their day off. What I got instead were two women and one man.”

“Were they selling vacuums?”

“What? What the hell would make you ask that?”

“I once bought a vacuum cleaner from a door-to-door salesman, one of the best vacuums I ever bought.”

“It wasn’t vacuums. Can I finish my story?” I asked him. But I think I had lost him for a few beats as he thought about his domicile super sucker. “So there they are at my door and this lady with a far-off stare and wild hair starts spouting about how I can survive the end of the world.”

“Did you listen? That sounds like some pretty good advice,” Gary said, coming back from the reverie of his vacuum experience.

“Who knew Jehovah Witnesses were so prophetic?” I said more as a statement.

“Jehovah’s? They’re like bedbugs--once you let them in your house, they’re damn near impossible to get rid of.”