Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

“Eww gross, Mom! Why would you shave your legs?” Josh asked, clearly turning the shade of green I had when I saw him eating his sandwich earlier.

“I’ll bet your legs don’t bleed as much as my head,” Gary said as he absently touched his wound.

“I’ll ask you one more time, Mike, and then you and your brother will be hitting the streets,” Mary said seriously. “Whether or not you ‘saw’ (in finger quotes) this Eliza, where was her last known spot?”

“I-95,” I told her.

“I-95 goes up the entire eastern coast. Could you please be a little more specific?” Mary said, heading towards the front door.

“Well, if you were to open that door you’re heading for and look across the street, past the small copse of woods, you would basically run into her last known whereabouts,” I told her.

I could tell that opening the door had suddenly lost some of its luster. Zombies were a nightmare, which many people had not been able to wrap their minds around and had paid the ultimate price for that disconnect. Vampires, well basically the same path, but you had to go a lot deeper into the woods, so to speak.

“Did Mike tell you he was a half-vamp?” Gary said, still fingering the bandages.

“What?” Mary said, almost falling over herself to get away from me.

“You’re not helping, Gary. How hard did that bullet hit?”

“Way cool!” Josh said, coming to get a better look at the circus attraction.

“Stay away from him!” Mary shouted, but I didn’t know if she was talking to him or me.

“Do you drink blood?” Josh asked excitedly. He may have heeded his mother’s words and stopped his advance, but his curiosity was unbridled.

“No, but I’ve got this thing for Pop-Tarts now,” I told him honestly.

“He has a psychic link to Eliza,” Gary added absently.

I thought Mary was going to faint. “Gary, feel free to shut the hell up whenever you want,” I told him.

“What? She has a right to know.”

“Does your friend out there turn into like Big Foot or something?” Josh asked. “I mean because I saw him running down the street and he was HUGE!” Josh said, spreading his hands as far apart as he could.

“No, but that would be cool,” I told Josh.

“Yeah, it really would be,” he agreed, nodding as he answered.

“Does she know you’re here?” Mary asked cautiously. She kept eyeing the door anxiously as if she expected her to bust through at any moment.

“No,” I answered.

“How can you be so sure?” Mary asked.

“Things would be way worse,” Gary said. “I really only have a scratch?” he asked her.

“Oh, honey,” Mary said reverting back to her caregiver status. “But it really is a nasty looking scratch.”

I don’t know if she was a trooper and had assimilated the information and was dealing with it or she just chose to push it down deeper into her psyche. Not my call, but whatever gets you through the day can’t be all bad.

“Can we still go on with the plan?” I asked Mary. She seemed to have lost herself in Gary’s wound. “I’ll take that as a yes,” I said to Josh.

“I would,” he agreed with me.

“You think it’s better to drag this behind rather than tie it to the top?” I asked Josh for maybe the third time.

“Even for an adult, you don’t listen well,” he admonished me. “I’ll tell you once again, this car has no top or bottom to tie anything onto. If it were to flip, it would get stuck on the clothes, like a turtle.”

“That makes sense,” I told him.

“That’s what you said the first two times I told you,” he said.

“Hey, cut me some slack, kid, I’m the one running with the zombies. I’m a little nervous.”

“I guess I would be too,” he answered, thinking about it.

“Gary, I know you’re head is probably still aching, and you might be woozy and everything, but do you think you could lay down some covering fire if I were to say, trip over something?”

Gary was fighting back a comment. I could see the machinations behind his eyes working frantically, but apparently higher reasoning or a higher purpose took over. “I don’t think this is a good idea, Mike, but I’ll always have your back,” he said, getting up, even with Mary’s disapproving stare.

I nodded my thanks to him. I stuffed Gary’s bandages and bloody shirt into a laundry bag, secured the top and then tied a nylon rope from the neck of the bag to a strut on Josh’s car.

I opened a window and immediately regretted my decision. The smell that assailed us was hideous, the sour stench of death. Josh hurled his peanut butter and oatmeal sandwich. It looked pretty much the same coming up as it had going down. I would not be adding that to my list of foods to try.

“You going to be alright?” I asked him as I lowered the car by the laundry bag rope to the ground.

I could hear Gary gagging in the background; Josh started back up. “Great,” I muttered, “dueling gaggers.” My support system was not looking up to task.

Mary saved the day. “You two are going to ruin my carpet!” she yelled, getting up to clean Josh’s internal spillings.

A zombie startled the crap out of me as he smacked into the bars. It had come dangerously close to stepping on the car. More zombies were coming to investigate the din and they weren’t generally too concerned with foot placement.

“Josh, you have to get that car out of here, or they’re gonna bust it,” I said. That seemed to get him. The smell was one thing, but losing one of his remote-controlled cars was another.

The zombie was eyeing us hungrily (pun intended). It was tough to say if intelligence burned behind its opaque eyes, but this was no clodhopping brain chaser either. Josh gulped loudly as he looked straight at the zombie.

“Umm, I have to get closer to the window so I can see the car,” Josh told me as he turned his large remote on.

“Cover your ears,” I told him.

Mary was coming back from the kitchen with her cleaning supplies. “Don’t you dare!” she screamed just as the report from my rifle rang out.

“COOL!” Josh yelled, taking his hands away from around his ears.

The zombie had fallen mostly straight back, but its left arm was resting on top of the car.

“No shooting in the house!” Mary yelled.

“I’ll keep that in mind, the next time,” I told her honestly. Zombies were within a couple of feet of the window. “Josh, now or never, buddy.”

I’ll give him credit. He mustered up all his courage and stepped up to the window. And then nothing, I saw him moving buttons back and forth and side to side and we could hear the car trying to do something, but the zombie had it pinned.

“I think I can get it free,” Josh said excitedly, up until the point a zombie woman cracked it in half. Josh looked more crushed than the car that was now getting ground into the dirt.

I quickly undid the knot on the small laundry bag and shut the window, drawing the shades and pulling the curtains shut.

“Well, that didn’t work,” I said, going into the kitchen, I sat down heavily in a chair.

“Josh, honey, are you alright?” Mary said, putting her cleaning supplies down to grab her son in a bear hug.

Josh wept a little, but he tried his best to hide it from us all.

“It was a gift from his father,” Mary said over his head to me.

I can’t even begin to convey how big of an ass I felt at this point. If you’ve read all of my journals, you know I have a penchant for saying or doing the wrong thing at the ultimate wrong time, but this one? This one took the cake.

“What…what am I going to do if…if Da…Dad comes home with the parts for it now?” Josh sobbed into his mother’s arms.