Mark Tufo - Alive in a Dead World

“Hey, you’re the immortal,” Gary said. “You should probably drive, all that second-hand smoke would be bad for the rest of us.”

“You guys suck,” I said. We all got back into the truck I made sure to honk for an extra long burst as we pulled away from Seventeen Georges Road, I waved enthusiastically for his hospitality. What can I say? I was feeling a little dour. Seventeen gave me the finger as we rolled away. We couldn’t keep doing this house to house crap. Eventually, we were going to come across someone that didn’t want company and we didn’t have the numbers or the arms to get into a firefight from an undefended position.

I was thinking of scrapping the whole idea of punching Eliza in the eye and just racing to catch up with Tracy. I’d rather spend my last few days with her anyway.

“I’ve got an idea,” Brian said from the backseat where the smoke was only minimally better. Gary and BT had thought it a better idea to sit in the truck bed, it was a balmy fifty degrees out and the sun was shining bright.

“I’m listening,” I choked out through the curtain of carcinogens.

“If you can find a hardware store, we’re going to need some tools.”

I drove back by the Big 5. If I remembered correctly, I had seen a Home Depot somewhere in the vicinity, I hadn’t really acknowledged it then, as I wasn’t planning on building a catapult at the time. “Hey, you’re not planning on making a trebuchet, are you?”

“A what?”

“A catapult-looking thingie.”

“I should have sat in the back with the other two,” Brian complained.

Paul had his sweater up over his nose, and his eyes were bloodshot. “Shit, Deneaux, could you lighten up a little on the cigarettes? I can barely breathe.”

“That’s the problem with you young ones today, no longevity. You are like all the products of your time, you’re not built to last like us old timers are. Probably would have asked for your HR generalist before you landed on the beaches in Normandy. We weren’t called the greatest generation for nothing.”

I almost put the truck up on two wheels when I realized I was just about to miss the entrance to the giant, box hardware store.

“Talbot, you just about made me fall out!” I heard BT yell.

I waved my apology to him, I was beginning to pass out from the oxygen loss. Brian, Paul and I raced to be the first to spill out of the cab. I think Brian won, but it was a virtual three-way tie without replay.

“How much room you got back there?” Paul asked after his coughing fit was through.

“Enough,” BT answered in sympathy.

“What are we doing here?” Gary asked.

“Brian has a plan,” I told him.

“Okay just so we’re clear. All you military types don’t think alike, right? I mean when he says he has a plan, it doesn’t involve some crazy stuff, right?” BT asked.

“Hell if I know. He didn’t tell me. Let’s lock and load insofar as we can,” I told the group.

Mrs. Deneaux came out and rubbed her half-smoked butt on the side of the truck so that she could smoke it later. “Oh come on,” she said to me when she saw me watching her in amazement. “You’ve already beat this truck into submission. Your brother won’t even notice this,” she said, pointing to the new, black burn mark.

“You have like five thousand cigarettes; why are you saving that one?” Gary asked.

“I plan on smoking every last one of them,” she cackled.

“Yeah, and most likely in the next few hours,” I answered. “Alright, let’s keep our eyes open for any of the squatters.” That’s what we were calling the zombies in the sleeping packs. “Any of those and we’re out of here, no matter if you got what you need or not, Brian.”

“Understood,” he said, nodding his head tensely.

I went through the door first, feeling totally inadequate with my .22 rifle. I had left the shotgun in the truck. It had some damage and until I could ascertain if it worked, I wasn’t going to risk our lives with it. “This sucks,” I mumbled.

“You say something, hoss?” Brian asked as he came up on my left flank.

“Just wishing I had something a little more potent than this pea shooter,” I told him.

“Bet that’s what you’re wife says,” he said. He stopped. “Sorry man, battlefield humor, helps ease the tension.”

“Not for me,” I said and he laughed. “Wow,” I said softly, the store didn’t look like it had even opened for business yet. It was virtually picked clean, except for a few scraps of lumber, haphazardly scattered on the floor. “Is this worth it?” I asked Brian.

“Maybe. What I’m looking for wouldn’t garner much attention. I wouldn’t think.”

“Alright lead on.” The five of us stayed in a tight-knit group, keeping eyes on every angle of approach. The stench of death was present, but it was impossible to distinguish if it was from dead people or walking dead people. Funny, but now I was wishing Deneaux was smoking to quench some of the stench.

We started to head down an aisle, but I didn’t like the idea of us being this tightly grouped, I was envisioning zombies flooding in from both ends. “Hold on,” I told the group. “Let’s do some reconnoitering. Gary, could you go up to the end of the aisle and make sure we’re not going to meet anyone we wouldn’t want to?”

“Is this about that time I told Mom when you snuck out of the house?”

“That was you?” She always told me that she had gotten up in the middle of the night because the dog had barked. “I got grounded for a month because of you?”

“Well what the hell were you thinking, leaving your bedroom window open in November?”

“I needed to get back into the house, didn’t I?”

“Well, how would I know you snuck out? Mom was up, getting a glass of water in the kitchen, I told her your bedroom window was open.”

“Do you have any idea how much she scared me when I got back in and turned on the light and she was sitting at my desk?”

“Oh I bet that was pretty scary,” Gary said empathizing with me.

“If I was any older, I probably would have had a heart attack.”

“If you were any older you wouldn’t have had to sneak out.”

“Boys,” Mrs. Deneaux said. “This is really fascinating, but I have a cigarette with my lip marks on it that I’m dying to get back to.”

The thought of anything with Deneaux’s lip marks on it gave me the shudders, apparently Gary too because he went to the end of the aisle without any further delay.

“Nothing up here!” he yelled.

“I thought you said he was in the military?” Brian asked.

“Air Force,” I told him.

“Oh,” Brian answered.

“BT? Can you, Paul and D stay here?”

“You got it, Mike, but this place does not feel right. I think we need to get going sooner, rather than later.”

“Understood, we’ll make this quick.”

“What could possibly make such a strapping young man as yourself afraid?” Mrs. Deneaux asked BT.

“You, for starters,” he answered, looking over her head for any signs of trouble.

“I’m going outside to finish my cigarette.”

“Shit,” Brian murmured as we looked in the tool section.

“What are you looking for? I can help,” I told him.

“Bolt cutters,” he told me almost simultaneously with Gary’s words.

“Movement!” Gary shouted.

“I am so sick of zombies,” I said aloud, but not really directed to Brian. My next sentence was, though. “You want to hear something sick?” I asked him.

“Not really, I’d like to get the bolt cutters and get the hell out of here.”

I ignored his entreaty completely. “I secretly wished something like this would happen. Yeah.” I continued when he looked over at me strangely. “I was sick of my boring ass life and my shitty job. It all seemed so pointless back then. I went to work, came home, ate dinner, said about five words to each of my kids, ten to my wife, went to bed, and then did the same thing the very next day. I mean, I don’t know if I was exactly thinking of a zombie invasion. A potential alien takeover or perhaps Chinese troops making a beach head in California would have worked just as well. I don’t know. I really didn’t care what the calamity was as long as my family was safe and I got out of my rut.”