Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

“Mike!” Gary said on the verge of a yell.

“I’m here, I’m here,” Mike said like a little kid lost in the woods.

“Where the hell else would you be?” Gary asked.

“Sorry, bro, this is just…”

“I know, Mike, I know. We’ve all lost ones we love, but there isn’t time, not yet. You’ll have to grieve later. Can you do that for me?”

Mike stared at him through watery eyes. “When did you become the leader type?”

“You like that?” he asked.

“Not bad and thank you,” Mike said. He wasn’t better, not by a long shot and maybe not ever, but he was functioning. Mike was still at the abyss; except now it was to his back. He was not sure if this new precarious position was the best place to be, but it gave him a chance to make this fucked-up world pay, starting with the damn cats.

“The stove is gas,” Gary repeated. “And I found matches.”

The cats were back at the kitchen entrance. Hunger is a powerful motivator, even more so than the need to breed. And how many species killed each other for the right to do that?

“Do you think they know something is up?” Gary asked as he pulled the stove out to get access to the gas line.

“I wouldn’t doubt it. I’ve read that cats have an open gateway to the spirit world and I bet their ancestors are telling them that these shit birds are about to join them in the afterlife. I would imagine that news isn’t sitting too well with them.”

A large gray tom strode into the kitchen, emboldening the rest of his clowder. Dozens of cats were behind him and back out of eyesight, in the living room.

“How’s that going?” Mike asked Gary, never taking his gaze from the large gray, and the accumulating throng. He knew if he broke contact with him or them, they would attack. Mike knew they had size on the cats, but the combined weight of the small predators most likely outweighed them both.

“Got it!” Gary said with a grunt as he stood up with one end of the disconnected piping. The noxious gas fumes combined with the ammonia smell almost put Mike on his ass. Something about the hissing of the escaping gas or the smell triggered the cats into action. Mike noted that the gray had not moved as his minions streamed past.

“Gary, get out of there! We’ve got to go.” Mike hoped his voice wasn’t approaching falsetto, but he was scared. Gary never did call him on it, so either he had kept it together better than he thought or Gary was too scared to realize Mike’s man-code slip-up.

Gary scrambled over the top of the stove and moved to the backdoor before the cats could attempt to cut off their retreat.

“How many are there?” Gary said, fumbling with wooden matches.

“Enough,” Mike told him, and he believed it.

The gray began to shimmer in Mike’s line of sight as the room filled with dangerous amounts of liquid propane. His tail stilled, and like a military message, the cats as one unit, struck.

Gary had pulled the back door open and Mike was using his rifle as an ineffectual baseball bat. At least three cats had found purchase on Mike’s shins and dug in for the long haul. Their curved claws tore through his skin and the muscle that lay underneath. The pain was excruciating, Mike’s first instinct was to reach down and squish their necks, but he knew as soon as he bent down, they would attack his neck and face and then it would be game over. Mike gritted his teeth and kept swinging to dissuade anymore cats from weighing him down. Occasionally, he made contact, even Bucky Fucking Dent gets lucky sometimes (If you have an old sports book in your safe house look it up; if you’re a Red Sox or Yankees fan, you already know).

Mike heard the match as it struck against the box. He’d seen enough Hollywood movies to know a giant explosion was about to ensue. He could smell the sulfur as the match lit and then out of the corner of his eye, he caught a giant flare as Gary lit the rest of the matches in the small cardboard box.

Mike knew he was still alive because the cats on his legs were making him painfully aware of that fact. The fireball of matches passed dangerously close to his head as Gary gently tossed it deeper into the kitchen. Mike felt Gary’s hand close around his collar as Gary pushed the storm door open and pulled Mike out with him. They were still falling backwards as a flash of ignited gas blew past them. A wave of burnt fur and hair blew by Mike. The fur came from the cats inside, but the hair was his own. Glass shattered as the fire sought air in a need to increase its size. Two of the cats let go of Mike’s legs and were running around wildly in the yard, they were on fire. Mike hoped it took them a long time to die. The third cat was trapped between his legs as he pressed them shut more tightly. The cat was ripping wildly at Mike to get away. He grabbed him by the scruff and pulled him up and away. The cat’s claws were lashing out. Mike held it up and punched it as hard as he could squarely in the face. He was confident he had crushed its skull with the blow. Mike dropped it to the ground. It had paid the ultimate price for its betrayal to humanity and now he was done with it.

“Where’s my rifle?” Mike asked.

Gary tackled Mike. “Roll, dumb-ass, roll!!” He was screaming. “You’re on fire!” He was pushing Mike around on the ground. Mike might have been thick, but he finally figured out what was going on, as the smell of burning hair and skin did not decrease, but rather increased.

Mike rolled around like his life depended on it, which it did. He was finally not actively burning, but smoke was pouring off him; he looked like he had busted a radiator hose.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Gary kept muttering, looking down at his brother.

“Pretty bad?” Mike asked. He was in a great deal of pain, but nothing that compared to the look of despair in his brother’s eyes. Odds were, Mike had third degree burns and had burned right through the nerve endings. “Help me up,” Mike said, extending a blackened hand.

Gary did not reach to grab it; he thought that maybe Mike’s skin would slough off if he did. The house roared behind them as the flames began to engulf the structure.

“Zombies are going to be coming, Gary. Help me up.”

“Umm,” he said and then he took off.

Mike passed in and out of consciousness for the next few moments as the pain began to catch up with him. Blasts of super heated air roiled over him as the house blazed. He thought he may have seen the large gray staring at him from the back door, but he couldn’t be sure. His corneas had been damaged and vision was becoming increasingly difficult. Burning tabbies streamed from some of the blown out windows just in time for the advancing zombies to hunt them down. Mike watched in horror as bulbous blisters began to form on his arms and hands. He may have cried out in pain, but the noise was lost in the destructive thunder of the flames.

Something passed by his immediate field of vision. He stuck his hands up to stop the ensuing bites, either from cat or zombie. Instead, he was hefted up from under his arms and deposited onto the cold, unyielding steel of a wheelbarrow bottom. They, or at least, the person who was pushing it, were now in motion. The heat from the fire hurt his face as the flames came close on the left side as they passed through the gate that led out to the front yard.

Zombies were everywhere. Mike tried to shut his eyes to the horror, but for some damned reason he couldn’t, his eyelids had been seared off.

“What’s wrong with me?” Mike asked.

“Don’t talk, Mike,” Gary said with labored breathing. “You’re going to be fine, fine.”

Mike had watched enough movies to know that line pretty much meant he was a dead man.

“You gonna make it?” Mike asked him. Gary was in pretty good shape, but running for your life pushing a wheelbarrow didn’t really sound conducive to a successful escape.