Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

We had driven a few more blocks. The car was pretty quiet as the first of the fat droplets of rain began to fall. Paul, without any conscious thought, turned the non-existent windshield wipers on. I don’t think he even noticed the grating sound of metal on glass or that the rain, that was now coming in sheets, was not being pushed from his field of vision.

Luckily, the rainstorm did not last long. By the time we got back to the storage yard, it had dwindled down to something resembling an ant pissing on a flat rock. (Think about that for a second, it’ll come.)

“Are those zombies?” BT asked, sticking his head out the window and into the soft spray as the car came to a stop.

It was still difficult to see through the wet, streaked windshield so we all rolled our windows down to take a better look.

“Better yet, where are Brian and Mrs. D?” I asked.

“I’ve had better days,” Gary intoned.

“That’s like comparing whether or not you’d like to get kicked in the nuts or eat an ice cream sandwich,” I said to him.

“Ice cream sandwich,” Gary said, without even blinking.

“Wise choice,” I said as I got out of the car. The zombies immediately started heading towards us.

“Do you hear that?” BT asked as he placed his new rifle on top of the car door frame.

“Sounds like someone is banging on the locker,” Paul said.

“Canned zombie?” I asked.

“Hopefully it’s Brian and Mrs. Deneaux,” BT said as he aimed for the approaching zombies through his steel sights. The rifle blast rocked the car slightly as the lead zombie’s head disintegrated. It was the first zombie kill that actually looked like a movie prop. The head looked like someone had stuffed it with some C4 and just blew it up.

“That was disgusting,” Paul said, turning away.

Gary was already gagging.

It took me six shots with my .22 before the second zombie stopped. I may have missed a couple because he was running full tilt at us. But I watched the connecting hits. Its head would snap back a little, like it had got caught up momentarily on a small branch, and forward it would keep coming.

By the fifth shot, I could see BT in my peripheral vision. He was wondering if he should finish the thing off. The sixth shot dropped him like a penny from a skyscraper. Its knees just buckled and he went down, no skidding, nothing.

“What the hell is going on?” BT asked, still sighting through the rifle to see if there were any more targets to acquire.

“Zombie 3.0,” I said as I went forward to check out the increased banging on the orange steel doors.

“Brian?” I asked directly outside the banging door.

If he didn’t answer, would I have to open the door to see if it was them? Deneaux, I think, I could shoot without too many issues; Brian would be another matter.

“It wasn’t my fault,” a whiny sounding Mrs. Deneaux said.

“How the hell wasn’t it? You fell asleep,” Brian said. It sounded like I was interrupting a repetitive argument.

“You killed all the zombies?” Brian asked through the doorway.

“How many did you think there were?” I asked him as I pulled up on the handle.

Brian shielded his eyes from the light as he stepped out. Mrs. Deneaux sat in the shadows a few moments more, letting her eyes adjust slowly.

“That’s it?” Brian asked, looking at the two prone bodies. “I figured there were dozens,” he said, a little embarrassed.

“Wanna start from the beginning?” I asked him.

“I was looking in the lockers and Mrs. Deneaux was supposed to be watching my back.”

“I was, but I got tired of your repeated failures,” she interjected acerbically.

“You’re priceless. No wonder nothing ever took root in that cold, barren womb of yours,” Brian shot out.

“If it were you coming out, I would have made sure to wrap the umbilical cord around your neck a few more times,” she said, not missing a beat.

“Whoa, whoa!” BT yelled, “How long have you two been locked up?” he said, stepping in between them both.

“You’re lucky it was dark in there!” Mrs. Deneaux yelled, “or I would have shot you!”

“That would have been preferable to listening to you drone on or almost die from your carbon monoxide emissions.”

“If I could have smoked more in the hopes that it would have suffocated you, I would have!”

“Alright this is all very entertaining, but our day has also been less than stellar,” I said.

Brian was about to unleash some new verbal assault on Deneaux, but stopped when he looked around at the four of us and our hangdog expressions.

“Sorry,” he said to us, careful to make sure that Deneaux did not believe she was included in that apology.

“Any luck before they came?” I asked.

His bowed head answered before he spoke. “We’ve been stuck in that shed almost since you left.”

“Alright, let’s just find someplace relatively safe to hunker down for the night. I think we could all use a break from today’s festivities.” Nobody argued, at least that was a step in the right direction.

“Got any good ideas about that?” BT asked, “Because I’m a little hesitant about going into other people’s homes right now.”

“Oh come on, Mike,” Gary said as he saw me looking back at the storage space Brian and Mrs. Deneaux had just been liberated from.

“We’ll chain up the front gate and we’ll post a guard,” I said.

“Hopefully, one that doesn’t fall asleep while they say they’re watching your back,” Brian said for good measure, looking across BT at Mrs. Deneaux.

I smiled inwardly as the old crow stuck her tongue out at him.

“Come on. I’m sure there’s plenty of blankets,” I said.

“Tons of sleeping bags too,” Brian added. “I’ve found all sorts of camping gear.”

“I wish we had some S’mores,” Paul said. “Oh that’s right, you don’t like them, do you, Mike?”

“Isn’t that un-American? Not liking S’mores?” BT asked.

“They make his hands sticky,” Gary said, adding his two cents.

“Think of how many more germs you can pick up with sticky fingers!” I said, trying to defend my position. If making my opponents laugh was victory, then I had defeated them all.

“Didn’t you ever think to lick your fingers off?” Mrs. Deneaux asked.

I shuddered at the thought.

“Wash them off in a stream maybe?” Brian asked, trying to be helpful.

“Ever hear of giardia?” I answered.

“Come on, as a kid you were thinking about a parasite in water that came from the refuse of wildlife?” BT asked.

I nodded. “I read a lot as a kid.”

“Poor bastard,” he said, smiling. “I’ll take first watch. Won’t get much sleep thinking about your S’mores issue anyway.”

I didn’t tell him that since Tomas’ bite, I didn’t feel like I’d ever need to sleep again and could pretty much take every one’s shift without an issue. I decided I’d take the other watches after his. That’s what he gets for making fun of me.

Chapter Six – Mike Journal Entry 5

BT finished up his watch. The sun had long since departed. We had a small flashlight going in the corner of the ten by thirty foot-shed, but it did little to shield us from the darkness within. Every time I even contemplated shutting my eyes, images of the infant from earlier today crept in. I should have just let sleeping zombies lie, so to speak. BT raised the door as quietly as he could, which was still as loud as you would expect a metal rolling door would be. Paul and Brian immediately awoke, Deneaux slept on, snoring like a sailor, (which I guess is an unfair comparison to sailors everywhere because I don’t really know what they sound like when they’re asleep.)