Mark Tufo: The End Has Come and Gone

Peter stepped onto the gravel of his parents’ driveway and turned to watch the streetlight turn on. “Ha, beat you this time!” he shouted to the indifferent fixture. He noticed the lights on in his parents’ house but did not see any movement. “Probably watching a movie,” he said aloud to somehow dispel the dread that was building up.

He looked up and down the street uneasily before entering his tiny abode. It was never Grand Central around here, but it was quitting time and there should be and was always more movement as folks returned from work, errands, school, whatever. Realization did not completely sink in until he logged on to Xbox Live and noticed there was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of the usual volume of games being played. He had no explanation for the increased beating of his heart or the sweat that started to build up on his forehead and palms.

He looked out his window and across the yard into the large bay window that dominated the back of his folks’ home. Nothing looked unusual except for the lack of movement. His mom was usually a whirling dervish of activity, preparing dinner, doing laundry, playing with their two Maltese dogs. Peter picked up the phone to call his parents, but the phone alternated between a fast busy signal and the three tone warning of a downed line.

“Should probably go and check on them,” he mused, still gazing out the window, the phone chirping in his hand. He wouldn’t have gone if he had stopped to turn on the television. Early stories were already reporting mass riots involving cannibalistic mobs. He walked down the stairs, the air seeming oppressively heavy. The clicking of the phone was drowned out by multiple sirens caterwauling a few blocks away. Peter moved his hand up to his face, studying the handset he carried, suddenly wishing it was heavier and had a longer reach. “Now why would I need a weapon?” he asked himself. “I’m going to my parents’, not Detroit .” Each step got heavier and heavier as he crossed the yard. “Come on Mom, just walk by the window, just once,” he pleaded. More sirens joined the fray and for the life of him he could not figure out why his parents weren’t checking out what the fuss was about. ‘They must really have Breakfast at Tiffany’s cranked,’ he thought, looking for humor and finding none. The sirens which had violently been pushing the silence away cut off as if on a timer as his foot hit the first step on the back porch. The vacuum of sound was immediately filled in by the frantic barking of Chip and Dale, his mom’s dogs.

“Chip and Dale never bark,” Peter said aloud. “Mom dotes on them too much for that.” He never noticed as the phone slid from his grip and cracked on the cement. His eyes were fixed on the door handle. For reasons he could not explain, he was more afraid now than that time he had stopped a barge three miles off the shore of Florida that carried two nuclear warheads. This was far worse, this was quite literally happening on his own doorstep. Retreating into the alternate reality of HALO right now seemed like the wisest course of action. And he was close to that decision, he wanted to put this made-up nightmare behind him and go try out the new game armor he had purchased.

He had actually started to softly close the screen door and turn to walk away when Chip’s or possibly Dale’s barking changed into a high pitched howl. “Never heard that before,” He said, frozen in indecision, half in and half out of the entrance. He gripped the door handle and pulled back quickly. “Whoa, that’s freezing!” he said, blowing air into his palm. Even the dog’s change in tone was not enough to force him into action. It was the three shambling strangers that had just entered into the circle of light at the base of his driveway that sealed the deal. “You guys don’t look so good,” he said as he twisted the knob and prayed to the patron Saint of All Who Opens Things that the door was not locked.

He was in and had quickly shut the door before the smell assailed him. His first thought was that he was wearing the same shirt he had worn for yesterday’s luncheon special and had possibly taken home far more than his fair share of cloying liver and onions’ odor. Although that would have been heavenly compared to the aerial blast of assification that filled the room. Chip, the lighter colored of the two dogs came running down the hallway, tail tucked between his legs. He stopped right in front of Peter and began to piss all over the floor, something he could not remember the dog doing even when he was a puppy.

“What’s the matter boy?” Peter asked, lowering himself down to the dog’s level. Chip was shaking violently and he pulled back when Peter tried to comfort him. Peter stood back up; Chip ran and hid behind the couch. “Mom? Dad?” Peter said so softly they might not have heard him if they were in the same room. Peter wanted to check the basement first because it was on the opposite side of the house from where Chip had run out from. “Not very logical,” he chided himself. “Or courageous. Come on, what would Death by Murder667 do? Well, first off he’d have an M392 and about 25 hand grenades, so that’s not going to work so much considering I don’t even own a squirt gun. But Dad does. Yeah, and it’s down the exact hallway you’d rather not go down. And who the hell are you talking to?” Peter started slowly down the hallway and turned back to where the small dog had hidden. “Any chance of some back up?” Not so much as a whimper. “Solo mission then,” he said, steeling himself to go down a path he’d traveled at least ten thousand times in virtual reality. The atmosphere, the stink, the feelings of dread all intensified. Each step became a chore, a vastly distasteful chore.

He could hear something tapping in his parents’ bedroom. It was a discordant sound that more than anything had Peter on edge. The door was half open but no light spilled out, and the ambient light from the hallway did little to pierce the darkness beyond.

“This sucks,” Peter said hardly a register above silent. The tapping grew louder and more frantic and then suddenly stopped. The tapping which he had found ominous was light years better than the ensuing quiet. Something stirred in the darkness. Peter involuntarily checked his chest for his trademark hand grenade bandoliers. “Yeah, that’s how most people solve their problems, throw a hand grenade in their parent’s bedroom.” A face materialized out of the gloom, it was familiar yet unrecognizable. His mother looked through Peter with opaque eyes. Blood lined her mouth, entrails emblazoned her night shirt, a jagged strip of flesh was torn from her forehead where dirty white bone shone in the light. If his mother had not slipped on the remains of Dale, Peter would have died that night, frozen in fright. His last thought as he fled from the house was that the tapping noise had been Dale’s toenails hitting the wall in his death throes.

Peter spent the next two days barricaded in his apartment, only occasionally stealing glimpses of the chaotic outside world. Hundreds of zombies had passed by his house, this he could tell by the smell alone. The windows were shut and duct tape sealed every crevice, and still the stench bled through. Gun fire gave him grim hope that not all was lost, but by the end of the second day the frequency of shots was becoming less and less and the smell was getting worse. He was able to do the math in his head on that one. Sleep was infrequent and always ended abruptly when the ruptured skull face of his mother crept in on him.

Seventeen diet 7 Ups, half a bottle of ketchup and something that might have been a corned beef sandwich lined the barren shelves of Pete’s fridge. “Always ate dinner with Mom and Dad,” he choked out. Pete understood the irony of starving to death in his apartment or becoming dinner for the abominations that walked outside. ‘It’s an eat or be eaten world,’ he thought sourly and with no humor.