Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

“What’s the matter?” Paul asked, sensing the new tension.

“Our zombie buddy has gone missing,” I said as I scanned the lot.

“How is that possible?” Gary asked, walking over to the fence.

“Mike, he was dead,” BT said. “I saw the exit wound out the back of his skull.”

“Please don’t tell me that now they’re adapting so they don’t die from a head shot,” Paul sobbed. “Could they?”

“No, he was dead,” I said flatly.

“How can you be so sure?” Paul asked, working himself up into a fervor. “I mean, so far, they’ve become fast, they can hibernate when there isn’t enough food, and apparently, they can thicken their skulls to try to preserve themselves. Wouldn’t it make sense from a purely zombie evolutionary trait to alter the one and only way that you can die?”

“We’d be fucked,” I said. “But Ree was dead.”

“Who is fucking Ree, Mike? And how can you be so damn sure?!” Paul was yelling now.

“I named the zombie and I know he was dead because I lost contact with him.”

Paul was just looking at me with a shocked expression on his face, not grasping what I had just told him.

“It’s the zombie whisperer!” Mrs. Deneaux cackled, lighting a cigarette.

“It’s a pity those things haven’t given you throat cancer yet,” BT said.

She held up her middle finger like it was a makeup compact while with her other hand she would dab her extended middle finger on it and pretend to apply base to her face.

“That’s actually pretty funny,” Gary said.

“Wait! You can talk to zombies now?! When the hell were you going to let the rest of us know?” Paul said with spittle flying from his lips.

“Relax, Paul,” BT said, placing his arm across Paul’s chest. “He just found out last night.”

Paul might have calmed down, but it was marginal at best. His temper went from something like eating a habanero pepper to rubbing jalapenos in your eyes; neither one is a great suggestion.

“What did this zombie have to say?” Mrs. Deneaux asked, leaning up against the closest shed.

“It revolved mostly around him being hungry,” I said.

“That’s rich,” she laughed. “A hungry zombie! Who would have ever thought it?”

“What good does that do us?” Paul asked.

“That in itself, not much,” I said.

“But,” BT prompted when I hesitated with the rest of what we had discovered.

“But I can… with limitations now… I made Re-Pete do what I told him to.”

“Are you guys pulling my leg? Are there hidden cameras or some shit? Can you make them go away? Better yet, can you tell their hearts to stop beating? If they even still do?”

“Well, I could tell a few maybe to leave, but once they got thirty or forty yards away, they’d turn back around. And it seems that I can’t make them directly hurt themselves.”

“Almost like they have a failsafe switch?” Gary asked.

“I guess,” I told him.

“Could you lead them to a precipice and have them walk off?” Gary asked, thinking of differing scenarios that would lead to a mass demise in zombies.

“Kind of like a zombie Pied Piper,” Deneaux said.

Gary shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, pretty much like that.”

“Like lemmings?” BT asked. “That would be interesting.”

“Right now, you guys know as much as I do,” I told them.

Thankfully, Brian shifted the focus, being under Paul’s scrutinous eye was starting to grate on my nerves. “Hey guys,” a slightly disheveled Brian said, rounding a corner.

“We’ve been looking for you,” Gary said.

“Sorry, I know I was on patrol, but there was nothing happening and I felt compelled to keep looking for guns. It’s like a quest now.”

“Did you move the zombie?” I asked him.

“Why would I do that? I was busy looking in lockers. Did you say how much time we have until our dinner guests arrive?” he asked.

“We’ve got about four hours,” I told the group. The range of emotions went from “Holy Shit! I’m scared” to “About time” and whatever else can happen with five other people. I was more on the “Scared Shitless” side.

“Should we look for more guns?” Gary asked as we all looked down on our less-than-adequate-looking ensemble of weaponry.

My head was going up and down in the universal language of yes, but my vote was a no. “It’s too dangerous.”

“We have enough time. I can go through a few more lockers,” Brian said.

Yeah we could also play a rousing game of Monopoly for all the good that would do , I thought. I told him it sounded like a good idea though. I wanted to do what every soldier did before going into battle, eat. For some reason, the only thing that keeps you from the thought of dying or killing is eating. We had pulled out packets and packets of dried goods from the camping lockers. Beef jerky, here I come.

Paul and BT went with Brian. Mrs. Deneaux, Gary and I went through the dried packets, looking for the best stuff from which to make a decent lunch.

“Split pea and ham soup!” Mrs. Deneaux shouted triumphantly, holding the packet up to the sun like she had just reared the newborn king.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked her. “I’d rather eat the packet it came in.”

“Who is insane enough to not like ham?” Mrs. Deneaux asked, looking sidelong at me.

Gary was pointing his index finger at me on the sly, thinking that I couldn’t see him.

“I can see you, brother,” I told him as he pulled his finger back quickly.

The weapons-of-mass-destruction-seeking team came back a couple of hours later with about as much luck finding anything as the US had been a few years previous.

“We got some swords,” Brian said, putting three sharp-edged blades on the ground.

“They any good?” I asked, picking one up. I’d seen some that would fall apart from the impact with a watermelon and others with a blade so dull they couldn’t cut a fart.

“They’re actually pretty good,” BT said. “I think they’re Japanese World War II officer swords.”

I hefted the blade. It definitely had a deadly enough feel to it. “I plan on being a little closer to the action. Do you mind if I borrow one of these?” I asked them.

“Me too,” Gary said, “Where he goes, I do too.”

BT just plain grabbed the third. “So what’s the plan?”

“You’d think you’d know better,” Gary said.

I laid the entire thing out in all its lack of glory. Without rocket launchers, a battalion of soldiers, and an air strike, this would be far from the killing blow I would have chosen. This was more of a gesture, a giving of the middle finger, if you will, in the face of overwhelming odds.

“This isn’t going to do much more than piss her off,” Brian said.

“Exactly,” I told him. “Pissed off opponents tend to make mistakes.”

Brian nodded his head in agreement. “Makes sense, in a suicidal kind of way.”

“Have you met Mike?” BT asked.

Gary nodded in commiseration. I punched him in the arm. “I’ll tell Dad when we get back,” he said, rubbing the tender spot.

I hope you will , I thought, because that would mean we made it there.

Chapter Seven – Mike Journal Entry 6

Eliza was late or early (and gone), or she had taken a different route or she had laid a trap for us, realizing what I was going to do. These three very different scenarios kept playing out in my head, each vying for its own time in the spotlight. I could deal with her being late or even the trap. Those two scenarios at least meant we were still in the game.