Mark Tufo - A Plague Upon Your Family

CHAPTER 14

“Alright.” I said looking at a little map I had got off the salesman’s desk. “I do not want to go into the city itself, but according to the yellow pages there’s a sporting goods store a few miles up the road. I want to try and bolster up our arsenal, get some rounds and hopefully some dehydrated food stores or whatever we can muster.”

Brendon was getting antsy. Being around this many buildings with so many hiding spots had us all a little on edge. Without the comfort of the rolling tank, that unease was even more magnified. “Do you think they’re going to have anything left? I mean everyone must have had the same idea.”

“How much of a chance did we have to get to the store?” I asked.

“I see your point.”

The plague had hit so hard and so fast, most were caught ill-prepared to deal with it. Only the truly paranoid had received even the slightest chance of survival. I laughed a little internally, even if we as a species somehow eked out a niche of survival we would be hard pressed to flourish, so mistrustful would be the survivors we would never go out and seek others. In the end we would all still die, suspicious and alone.

Myself, Tracy, Tommy, Henry, Travis and Jen, climbed into my Terrible Teal machine. Brendon, Nicole, Justin, and BT hopped into the second.

It was approaching dusk as we rolled up into the sporting goods store parking lot. No one had left a light on for us. The black was as pitch as it could get. As human beings we are inherently built to fear the dark. That is why our ancestors harnessed the use of fire to chase away ‘the demons’. The night was scary enough when we just ‘thought’ that there were monsters roaming around. Now that the abnormal was the normal, well you can imagine that our imaginations were in overdrive. But really how vivid did ones visualization need to be, every magnificent horror was now a reality. There was nothing left to the imagination. All of this ran through my mind as I tried in utter vain to peer into the near inky obsidian that was the interior of the store.

“I’m going to get out and see if I can scope out the inside of the store.” I said, hoping that someone would say we should wait until the morning. Nobody fucking did. Fuckers. I opened the door to the minivan, still pissed that this was my new ride. I would have slammed the door closed in frustration but I didn’t want to give anything nearby an excuse to come investigate. Well mostly that, but partly I thought the piece of shit door might fall off too. I’d be damned if I drove around in a zombie infested world without a door. That would be like peeling back the lid on a can of spam in Hawaii. Except for the silent purring engines on two minivans (sarcasm – it sounded more like some cats and a large bag of batteries had been placed in a dryer) the night was still. Deathly still. (Well you knew that was coming). I got as far away from the vans as I felt was prudently wise, straining my ears to hear any errant sound. But that really is a misnomer though, how the hell does one ‘strain’ their ears? It’s not like you can flex them, you can’t ‘listen’ any harder. I guess what I was doing was concentrating harder on listening. My wife would have been so proud.

Nothing, I heard nothing. Yet I wasn’t relieved. The quiet was somehow more disturbing. With sound, there would be something to focus on. Without the benefit of a séance I was wildly free to speculate on any number of things. I placed my face up against the cool plate glass window, cupping my hands on the side of my eyes and straining my best to see something. See previous section on ‘straining’, I had about the same results. Nothing. So this is where in a low budget movie something slams into the glass on the other side, startling the shit out of the hero/heroine and the audience. Don’t be fooled, being there in real life, I FULLY expected that to be the case. I was pleasantly surprised to not have to suffer that little truism.

BT and Travis had both exited the minivan. I jumped a little when they opened their doors. I hoped that it wasn’t too obvious that I might have released my bladder at that moment. I tried to hang on to my dignity.

“Anything?” BT shouted.

His booming voice reverberated off the glass. “Well there wasn’t but there might be now.” I answered.

“What!” He yelled back.

“Grab the tire iron!” I yelled back.

Travis was coming towards me as BT was rummaging in the back of the van looking for the tire iron.

“Got it!” BT yelled back triumphantly.

“Dude stop yelling!” I screeched. ‘Lead by example, breathe’.

“Oh right!” He yelled as he came towards me. The giant man silhouetted in the headlights, approaching me with a pistol in one hand and a tire iron in the other was the stuff of most horror novels. I lamented, that this most pedestrian theme was NOT the cause of all our desolation.

“What are you planning on doing with this?” BT asked as he handed me the tool.

I tapped the glass, in response.

“Oh.” BT said as he backed away a pace or two.

I was lining up my shot, doing my best to shield my eyes from flying glass, and my ears from the fulminating noise. But again you can’t really do much there. God didn’t deign that we should have ear lids, although how cool would that be. However, the boon might also be a curse. Can you imagine that as guys we could ACTUALLY turn off our significant others diatribes? The problem though, would be not only would they suspect that we weren’t listening, but with our ear flaps closed, they would also have visual proof. Okay not one of my better ideas.

“Dad.” Travis said matter of factly. I stopped in mid-swing. Although if this was baseball, my check swing would have been called a strike as my forward momentum brought the tire iron to a gentle tapping on the window. “Door’s open.”

“Yup, I knew that.” I said handing the tire iron back to BT. “Tracy.” I yelled over my shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill.” She said as she slid out of her bucket seat and into mine. After a few seconds of adjusting the seat and the steering wheel to her liking she gave me the universal sign for a-ok, two thumbs up.

“Aren’t you going to adjust the mirrors?” I asked her. She gave me another universal sign, this one not quite so pleasant.

I took a deep breath. I was pulling on all of my reserves of intestinal fortitude to go through that door. BT was behind me and Travis was bringing up the rear. I took one more long pull of the piercing air. Tommy brushed past me and in.

“Where the hell did he come from?” BT asked incredulously.

“I guess it’s safe.” I said as I followed him into the black midst.

I stopped less than two steps in from the doorway, not for fear or some innate prescience. I just couldn’t see a damn thing. I had no desire to be skewered by a ski pole, or walk nuts first into a dumbbell display. I could hear Tommy walking around like he had a floor plan. I was tempted to follow in his assured sounding footfalls.

BT nearly sent me sprawling as he walked into my back. “Sorry my man. Where’s the kid?”

“Shit BT, I’d be lucky if I could tell where my hand is.” Both, BT and myself turned to look at the same instance. Whether we thought the same thing, I’m not sure but BT’s expression of awe left little to doubt. Tommy was lit up like the Arch Angel Michael come to seek vengeance on a wicked world. As our eyes adjusted to the radiance it became clear that Tommy was merely holding a battery powered Coleman lantern. I shook my head in consternation, I will swear to my dying days that for the briefest of seconds there was more to it than that. I wanted to ask BT but I think he’d deny it, hell I’m not even sure what I saw and I was there.