Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

“It’s more than that, I agree she’s not a fan, but there’s something more. Do you have enough strength to head upstairs?” BT nodded. “I figure the old bat has ears like one.”

Josh laughed.

“Josh is everything all right in there?” Mary called.

“You really shouldn’t let him get too much influence from Michael. He sets bad examples,” Deneaux chirped into Mary’s ear.

“Tell me again why you decided to come with us?” I asked, before she could respond, I continued on. “Or better yet, why did I allow you to come with us?”

I could hear her over-exaggerated heavy sigh from where I was.

“Mom, I’m fine, we’re going to play with my Lego’s again,” Josh said, winking to me.

“Be careful,” Mary said.

“From the Lego’s?” Josh asked, completely confused.

“You know what I mean,” she answered.

Josh shrugged his shoulders and mouthed, “No, I don’t” to me.

“I do,” I soundlessly worded to him and then waved him to go upstairs.

BT followed, the big man was moving slowly and had to take a break halfway up the stairs.

“You alright?” I asked him from the top of the stairs.

“I didn’t know you cared,” he said a little more heatedly than perhaps he meant to, as he apologized when he got up to me. “I’m sorry, man, I feel like I’ve got the flu, without all the phlegm.”

“Gross,” Josh said. “Come on,” he said, pushing the door to his room open.

BT almost crashed into a rendition of a B-1 bomber as he headed straight for the bed to plop down on it. Josh’s bed creaked and groaned from a pressure it had not been designed to bear. Josh and I stared for a few seconds waiting for the resultant collapse.

BT, getting wind of what we were doing, spoke. “It’ll hold,” he growled, and as if intimidated by his words, the bed did as it was told.

“Can I stay?” Josh asked. “I know you guys came up here to talk and get away from the women, but I’m a man too, so I should be here.”

“It’s your house, my man,” BT said. “I don’t see why not.”

I was more inclined to send him packing for a few minutes, but I don’t think he was going to do any heart to heart talking with Deneaux anytime soon.

“What’s going on, Mike?” BT asked. “I caught some of her conversation with Mary, but I kept drifting in and out. All I could really tell is that she wants to get out of here as quick as possible.”

“It’s nothing concrete, BT, but she’s trying to cover her tracks.” I related the story of finding Brian and how he was facing away AFTER she had called him, and how she now was in possession of Paul’s rifle. I also mentioned how she had said she was alone, but the house she was staying in provided clues to the contrary. “It’s nothing but a suspicion, but she did something she’s trying to cover up and she wants us to leave the scene of the crime before we turn up any evidence.”

“Brian’s dead,” BT said wiping his hand down his face. “Man, I almost don’t want to go back to your brother’s and see what this does to Cindy.”

“I cannot leave here until I know about Paul. There’s no way I could look Erin in the face and tell her that I have absolutely no clue what happened to her husband and my best friend.”

“So Brian was a zombie? Why lie about anything to do with that then?” BT asked confused. “Could the bullet have spun him around or anything?”

I looked over to Josh before I replied. “Exit wound was on his face.”

“Gross,” Josh said, I agreed implicitly.

“She’s acting so shifty, even more so than usual. I don’t have a good feeling about Paul.” I hitched a little, I’m still mostly human I thought, I’m still entitled to have feelings. “I’ve known him for thirty years. I owe it to him at the very least to find out what happened.”

“You’ve got to prepare yourself for the real possibility that he is no longer with us,” BT said tenderly.

“I know that man, I do. With a rifle, Paul wasn’t a huge threat; well without…” I didn’t, I couldn’t finish the damn sentence.

“I’d like to head out with you in the morning,” BT said. “Help look for him.”

“Me too,” Josh threw in before I could even tell BT no.

“No, on both counts.”

“You gonna stop me?” BT said, trying to rise up off the bed and use his height advantage as a mitigating factor.

“BT, Josh could stop you right now.”

Josh looked over at me like maybe I shouldn’t be throwing him under the bus quite like that.

“Dammit, Mike! I’m as weak as you right now,” BT said, cursing. “I can barely move.”

I didn’t rise to his bait, I did think about putting him in a headlock though, just because I thought I could probably take him. But merely to gaze upon the man is to feel intimidation. “You sure you never played in the NFL?”

“Why? Because I’m big and I’m black?” BT said with some force.

I thought about it. “Well, yeah.”

He laughed. “Played some college ball, had some pro scouts interested. It never went any further.”

And he dropped it, I don’t know if there was no more to add or he didn’t want to talk about it.

“What time are we leaving tomorrow?” Josh asked.

“No way, kiddo,” I told him. “Your mom, if given the chance, would throw me out into the street in front of a convoy.”

“A what?” Josh asked.

“A bunch of trucks,” BT clarified. “And he’s right. It’s too dangerous out there for you.”

“I’m almost twelve,” Josh said, making it sound as authoritative as possible.

“Yeah, and I’m sure you’re going to want to make thirteen,” I told him. And then reality with its ugly iron fist hit me with an uppercut. What really is the rest of his life going to encompass? Eventually, they are going to run out of food and they will have to leave their relatively safe haven and neither seemed to have the skills to scavenge in a hostile world. Basically, they were living on borrowed time.

That didn’t mean I was taking him with me on a learning expedition, but I still felt for the kid and his mother. Her ex-husband, his father, was gone ( much like Paul , crept in. I squashed it heavily, but the thought kept peeking from around the edges) and he wasn’t coming back. How many “families” were there still out there like this? Isolated, each its own island of remoteness. There could still be a salvageable community in this city, but they would never be able to become cohesive. There was no communication, no ability to seek others out. The populace would be too fearful to create bonds anyway. There might be a few brave souls like Mary that would open a door to a stranger, but she was in the minority. We were just as lucky she hadn’t shot us instead.

Between zombies and criminally opportunistic humans, the world was merely a shell. The day of humans as the dominant species on the planet was coming to close and it was just as violently dangerous and deadly as the great comet strike that took out the dinosaurs two hundred million years ago. There would be a few viable communities still intact, places like Little Turtle or Easter Evans School, but as the zombies’ resources became fewer and fewer, they would seek these last food zones out relentlessly. Nothing would be able to withstand that type of onslaught.

Ultimately, the zombies and Eliza would have won, but what was the prize? She would rule a planet of mindless eating machines. I can’t imagine she had thought this out completely. She gets off on the power she holds over people and the fear she instills in their hearts. Zombies didn’t care, at all, they eat. And make no mistake, we would be just like every other extinct species on the planet, gone and for good. Seen any Tasmanian wolves lately? Maybe a dodo bird or two? There is no species regeneration. And Eliza and Tomas would hardly qualify as Adam and Eve.