Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

“You alright?” Mrs. Deneaux asked and it almost sounded like she cared.

“Fine,” Brian answered as he steadied himself on the back of her lawn chair. He prayed that its compromised integrity would sustain his weight for just a little while longer. If he plunged to the ground now and passed out, he was certain he’d find himself alone on the bridge when he awoke. Blood slowly pushed its way back up and into his head, and the dizziness passed.

If Mrs. Deneaux hadn’t been so busy assessing Brian, she might not have missed a chance to end the entire conflict. Paul decided to seize the day as he grabbed Mrs. Deneaux’s rifle. He stood completely upright. A slight breeze was blowing left to right as he placed the crosshairs of the Winchester 30-30 on Eliza’s breast.

Brian and Mrs. Deneaux turned as Paul fired.

“I hit her!” Paul screamed.

“Who?” Brian asked, swallowing down some bile that had swirled up from his gut.

“Eliza! I hit Eliza!” Paul shouted, almost dropping the rifle off the railing.

Mrs. Deneaux grabbed it before he could. She started looking through the scope for any signs that the vamp was dead. “I don’t see anything. How far away was she?” she asked.

Paul started counting off trucks. “Nine or ten back,” he said proudly.

“That’s about a three-hundred-yard shot,” Brian said, finally able to move without the threat of falling.

“Did you compensate for bullet drop?” Mrs. Deneaux asked, moving the scope further out to look for Eliza.

“Bullet what?” Paul asked. His previous high beginning to sink.

“At that distance, the bullet could drop about ten inches roughly,” Brian said.

“If you were aiming for her skull, that could still have done her some damage. Might have hit her in the chest.”

Paul’s head sank.” I was aiming for her chest, figured I had a better chance of hitting that.”

“Gut shot the bitch,” Mrs. Deneaux laughed. “Bet that hurt.”

Brian thought her laugh sounded very much like what drowning babies crying would. “We should really get out of here now, I can’t imagine that anything good can happen from pissing Eliza off.”

***

Eliza had been so intent on finding out why her zombies had turned and what she needed to do to rein them back in, she had not been anticipating an outside threat.

“This is Talbot’s doing! I can smell the stench of him all over this!” Eliza spat.

“I think it would be best if we left him his small corner of the world, Eliza,” Tomas said, smiling as he walked with his sister.

“You did this!” she said vehemently, spinning on her heel to confront him. “Without your help, that animal, Durgan, would have killed him and we could be out exploring vast new ways to torment the world. I will not be bested by a mere man.”

“He is no longer merely a man, sister,” Tomas added.

“No, thanks to you.”

Tomas shrugged at the jibe. “He has struck you hard, Eliza. Most of your humans are either dead or have fled. I beg you one last time, leave him be.”

“Never!” she screamed as she stepped out from behind a truck and smack dab in front of a speeding bullet. Her mid section punched in from the projectile as her upper torso bent over. Tomas grabbed her before she could fall and pulled her back behind cover.

“It is not a fatal blow,” Tomas said, inspecting the wound.

The zombies around the siblings did not advance, but they had stopped what they were doing and were now watching them intently.

Eliza sat in her brother’s arms for a while longer. The searing pain was something she had not experienced since her human youth when a gang of Huns had trapped her in an old barn and beat and used her for three days before they tired of her. For the first time in half a millennia, Eliza doubted her intentions. “Why won’t he die, Tomas?” Eliza begged.

“It is for something you have forgotten about, Eliza: family, he fights for the lives of his family. He knows no stronger bond.”

“Then that is the bond we must break,” Eliza said as she stood up. The bullet had worked its way out of her skin and the wound was nearly healed.

“Did you hear nothing I said?” Tomas fairly cried.

“I heard everything you said. If we kill Talbot’s family, he will follow closely behind.”

“Not until he exacts his fair measure of revenge. He will not strike out if we do not corner him.”

“Maybe that would have been the truth at one time, brother. No, we must strike while he is at his weakest, while he still has family to use as leverage and while he is still learning the powers that you bestowed upon him. You sealed his fate when you bit him.”

There was nothing he could do to sway her from this course, and when the final showdown did come, whose side would he fall on? He still hadn’t made up his mind.

The cries of her humans had nearly died out. A few trucks could be heard pulling away and zombies were spread out everywhere, hunting for food, including the ones that had stopped for a moment, checking out Eliza, to see if she would be coming on the menu.

“We should leave here, Eliza, in case he has any other surprises in store for us.”

Eliza made sure this time to keep under cover and concealment behind the remaining trucks as she herded her zombies back in. And on that highway was where she would leave them, two thousand zombies, through the coming winters and summers. Those zombies would sway forever, as leaves fell, as rain poured, as sun soaked them, tied to Eliza’s last order to stand still.

“You’re just going to leave them here?” Eliza’s first-in-command asked, as he swung the command truck around.

“I fear that a couple of the zombies looked at her with a less than flattering stare,” Tomas told the man.

The man wouldn’t miss them. It was tough to feel sorry for the creatures that tore his wife apart in front of his very eyes as she fell from the ladder they were climbing to get up their apartment’s fire escape. He had thought about just letting go and joining her, but he wasn’t brave enough for that. Not brave enough to die and not brave enough to live. Eliza had come across him a week later, still huddled in the far corner of his apartment, covered in his own filth, too scared to even cross his own living room to get some water.

She had promised him a chance to strike back at those responsible for his wife’s death. Dean had never been a God-fearing man, but he knew the devil when he came across it, and the only thing missing on Eliza were the horns. It wasn’t that he believed her words, it was what he knew she would do to him if he didn’t join her. A coward is led. He felt this was his punishment for not dying with his wife. He had seen and done more acts of brutality, cruelty and evil in the last six months than any person should ever be exposed to, and all in the name of Eliza. He knew his wife was looking down on him, frowning, and that he would never see her again. There was no place in heaven for the likes of him, not anymore. Maybe at one time, he had the whole meek thing going for him, now he was certain he was damned. If he had not thought that, he would have killed himself months ago, but he was afraid of meeting whatever it was that had spawned Eliza. So, afraid of this eventual meeting, he had begged first Eliza and then Tomas to bite him. Eliza had laughed cruelly at him when his request came.

“You would give up your soul so willingly?” she asked, flashing her lengthened canines.

“More than anything, mistress,” he had groveled before her.

“You disgust me,” Eliza told him. “The only way I would bite your pathetic neck would be to drain you dry. To watch you shrivel like an exposed worm in the mid-July sun.”

“Please mistress! Have I not served you well?”