Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

BT threw his hands to his face. “Shocker!” he exclaimed.

Tracy punched him so hard in the arm, he actually stepped back a few inches.

“Damn, woman! If I could crane my neck far enough down to see you, I’d swat you away like a fly,” BT bellowed.

“Hey, this is pretty cool, I’m usually the one in the middle of the shit storm.”

“Shut up, Talbot!” BT and Tracy said in unison, and then they high-fived. Well, to be fair, Tracy way-high-fived and BT went way-low, but it was the same thing, sort of.

“Okay, no shit, we all know she’s coming. But I know when and how. I think it’s time we went on the offensive.”

“I’m listening,” Brian said, carrying his third load of socks to the car. “What?” he said as he dropped them in the backseat. “I like to have clean feet; it’s an Army thing.”

“So you gleaned all this info from her?” BT asked, reluctant to use her name.

I nodded, maybe just a little too enthusiastically.

“Close your mouth when you’re nodding, Talbot,” Tracy said, “You look like the village idiot.”

“Any chance she fed you some misinformation?” Brian asked.

“First off, I think she’s probably too arrogant for that,” I said. “I think she’d tell us willingly what she planned on doing, probably thinking there was nothing we could do to stop it,” I told the growing group. Gary and Justin nodded in agreement. “But no, I’m pretty sure she had no clue I was eavesdropping on her.”

“Whew, buddy,” BT said, rubbing his hand over the top of his head. “This isn’t like solving the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune.”

I stopped him there. “BT, don’t tell me you watch Wheel of Fortune?”

“What in the hell is wrong with Wheel of Fortune? Vanna White is a goddess.”

I shrugged, I had to agree with him there. She might be a few revolutions of the globe past her prime, but who amongst us had never fantasized about her turning our letters on? Okay, poor sexual innuendo, but it gets the point across.

“So you were saying?” Tracy asked BT as she pushed me to wake me from my Vanntasy. (See? That was much better!)

“No offense, buddy,” BT said, “but your ideas suck ass.”

For the second time in a matter of seconds, I found myself agreeing with BT. “Granted. But I’m sick of running, I want her to re-think her strategy, I want to bleed her this time,” I said with anger.

“You are not talking that ‘last stand’ shit again, are you, Talbot?” Tracy flared. “Because if you are, I will drag your sorry ass out of here by your balls, upside down!”

BT, Gary, Paul and even MJ, who was not paying us any attention covered up their privates in a mutual shared sympathy.

Justin nearly split his side laughing. Travis was shaking his head from side to side, in disbelief that he had just heard those words issued from his mother’s mouth.

When I felt I could safely remove my hand from my nether regions, I continued, although I have to admit I had turned a slight degree or two away from Tracy, so as not to give her easy reaching access to my cherished jewels. “No, no I promise no John Wayne stuff. I want her to feel some of the trepidation that we do every waking second. I want her to think that maybe her next breath might be her last.”

“Mike, vamps don’t breathe,” Gary said.

“Analogy, brother, just an analogy.”

“Gotcha,” he said, clicking his tongue and pointing at me with his index finger.

Well, let’s get this part out of the way , I thought to myself. “Tracy, I still want you and Meredith and the boys to head back to Ron’s. The sooner you can get MJ back there and working on his wonder boxes, the better; and this gambit should buy us plenty of time.”

She looked at me coldly with her battleship-gray eyes. I waited silently for the tempest within to be unleashed. It never came. “You swear to me, Talbot, that this is not one of your do-or-die stunts and I will do as you ask.”

“Really?” I asked incredulously. “I honestly wasn’t expecting that.”

“The window of opportunity is closing,” she said forcefully.

“Yeah, yeah yeah,” I said quickly. “No, it’s not any sort of final encounter.”

“Then you teach that bitch that messing with the Talbots means you have hell to pay!”

“Sweet,” I told her. “Who wants to stay for the fireworks show?” I asked the growing crowd.

“’Bout fucking time,” Deneaux replied, clapping her hands together and rubbing them briskly.

“You’re in?’ I asked her, unconvinced.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she told me, dead serious.

“Huh. What a weird friggin’ day,” I said, shaking my head.

“What do you need and what’s the plan?” Brian asked.

Like the vast majority of my plans, it was long in thought and very short on words. As I write that, it doesn’t make much sense. Suffice to say, it basically boils down to an ambush, followed by the death of a bunch of her henchmen. If we’re really lucky, Eliza catches one in that tainted melon of hers.

“Mike, as the only black member of this dysfunctional group, I’m truly amazed that I’m still alive. I mean I’ve watched almost every horror movie ever made, and without fail, if a man of color is in the movie, he dies first. In recent years, however, it has gotten somewhat better. Now, we sometimes make it to second killed, after the ditzy blonde, but I’ve got to imagine that a brother’s life expectancy in any horror setting is generally a couple of hours, at most.”

“I agree with your movie assessment, BT, but how does that apply right now?” I asked him.

“Alright, hear me out… So me still being alive bucks that trend, right?” I nodded in agreement. “But damn, Mike, you keep breaking the cardinal sin of all flicks.”

“The splitting up, I know, I know. I feel like the idiot that says, ‘Yeah I’ll go down to the basement alone to check out the breaker box, and I only have this one wooden match to light my way. Oh, and did I mention that we heard suspicious sounds down there only moments earlier?’”

“Yeah, like that, so you know what I’m talking about.”

“Sure I do. I’m usually the one asking the characters on the screen what the hell they’re thinking.”

“Well, what are you thinking?”

“Well, it is dark and the basement does house the breaker box and my match is the extra long, barbecue-style.”

“I wonder if I could catch up to Alex?” BT wondered.

“I want my family out of here, BT. If only I could I’d send them to some lonely outpost on the moon to get away from this crap. Their safety means everything to me. They’re the air I breathe, the food I eat, the…”

“I get it, don’t go getting all soft on me.”

“Too much information?” I asked him sincerely.

“I’m starting to see under all that Marine Corps veneer. Are you sure it wasn’t the Peace Corps? Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

“I wonder if Alex would come back and get you.”

“You think he’s alright?” BT asked.

“I don’t know, buddy, but he keeps breaking that cardinal rule too.”

“He sure does,” BT said as he walked away.

“Paul, are you sure about this?” I asked my best friend for the better part of three decades. Damn! That makes me sound so old. And then the realization of my eternity slammed into my chest. My best friend, with whom I had shared so many experiences, would be a distant memory as I strode through the world, unencumbered by love. Would I bother with humanity at that point? The only reason I still interacted with people now was because of my wife and kids. If she were to be gone, then what? Would God forgive me? Would it even be considered suicide? I had already made my bed when I traded my soul for my family’s safety. I was pretty sure I was on the top of God’s shit list and I can guarantee that is not anywhere you want to be, just ask the ’04 Yankees. They’ll tell you the same thing.