Mark Tufo: A Plague Upon Your Family

Alex hopped off the big rig, rubbing his arms for warmth, but more likely to ward off the evil that emanated from every corner of this burg. “This place doesn’t feel right Mike.”

I wanted to agree with him and tell him this felt like we had just stepped into the door of the biggest surprise party ever given and we were still waiting for the shout of ‘SURPRISE’ to come. An expectation hung in the air, it was palpable, it was overbearing, it was just plain creepy. But even after all those emotions were churning in my head there was only one thing I wanted to know. “When the hell did you learn how to drive that truck?”

Alex stared long and hard at me, like I’d lost my marbles and now he was wondering why he had decided to hitch his cart to mine.

“Listen I know this place feels like a tomb Alex, my nerves are taut and I can feel my spinal fluid quivering. I want to get some gas and get the hell out of here. I was just curious.”

“You’re nuts Mike, I’ll give you that. I feel like I can barely breathe because of the weight of this place and you want to talk banalities.”

“Hey I take offense to that, at least, I didn’t bring up the weather.”

“You would have given enough time.”

“Yeah you’re probably right.” I sighed. “That still doesn’t change the fact that when I met you, you didn’t know how to drive the damn thing.”

“Fine, you crazy gringo, I’ll stand in this damn ghost town just a little longer so that I can explain to you that I had Carl give me a few lessons while I was securing the plow. I had him do that because I was afraid the wall was going to give exactly like it happened, all of a sudden and without warning, and I was afraid that Carl would be nowhere in sight and we would be stuck on this giant paperweight with nobody to drive it.”

“Now was that so hard?” I asked as I ripped the wrapper off of a granola bar. “Alex.” I started and from my tone he knew I was going in a serious direction. “Where are you planning on going?” Alex wasn’t dumb. He caught my meaning of using ‘you’ and not ‘we’. He looked deep in thought, there was a conflict roiling within him. Sure we were fast friends, but Alex had stronger bonds elsewhere, as did I.

“I’m thinking Florida.” He answered almost apologetically, as if I held any sway over his decision-making. “I might still have family there. Any chance you’d be going that way?”

I shook my head slowly. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t go. Florida, the sunburn state.”

He smiled at my crappy joke. I loved him even more. “I have to go home (meaning the Northeast), if..” I swallowed hard, “ If my family is still alive, I want to be with them.”

Alex nodded solemnly. “I agree.” He said softly.

“And on top of that Tracy wants to go and get her mom.”

“Her mom? Where is she at?”

“Yeah her 79 year old, widowed mother that lives on an old farm by herself in North Dakota.”

“Mike, come on man, why are you going to go on a fool’s errand. We both know what you’re likely to find.”

“You tell her that Alex and I’ll give you fifty bucks and a case of beef jerky.”

“Write to me and let me know how the weather is.” Alex said as he walked away to see if he could find a switch to power on the pumps, or a hose of some sort to get gas out of the ground tanks.

“Yeah real nice.” I shouted to him. I was halfway through my power bar when the back of the tractor-trailer hatch opened. I almost choked on the piece in my mouth when I saw who was getting out of the back.

“How long are we staying in this little shithole?” The voice bellowed, from the second largest man I had ever seen in my life, next to that crazy bastard Durgan, who was now so much Zombie Chow. SOMETHING O’Henry, aka Big Tiny, aka BT. He was looking right at me while he asked the question. “You gonna answer or what?” We had picked up the guy while we were making a food run to the local Safeway store. He’d been trying to get into a pissing contest with me ever since. I did the only prudent thing I could think of, I turned and walked away.

“I’m talking to you Talbot!” He yelled.

“Yeah I figured as much.” I said over my shoulder. “I just don’t feel like listening.” I’m not thinking that was the right answer, I heard or more like felt the ground shake as he hopped off the back of the trailer. The train was coming I had about ten seconds until contact. Luckily I was saved, sort of.

“Dad!” Travis yelled, and this wasn’t a warning about BT coming up behind me. Travis was on my right side behind the gas pumps, from his vantage point he couldn’t see the little melodrama that was playing out. I turned to go and see what was putting that distress into my son’s voice. BT sheared off too. Whether to intercept my current course or to sate his own curiosity I wasn’t sure. I trotted up to Trav’s side a couple of seconds before BT. The big man gave me the once over before following Travis’ pointing finger. About two hundred yards away was a man and he was coming at full sprint.

“You think it’s a survivor?” BT asked. I could tell there was a little more than a tremor of fear in his voice. Well it was good to know the guy was afraid of something. A hundred and fifty yards and his pace hadn’t slowed down, what was more worrisome was that he didn’t wave or try to gain our attention in any sort of fashion. The skeevies I was feeling were felt by all of us, something wasn’t quite right but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“Man his clothes look like shit.” BT said in hushed tones. I nodded in agreement. But that wasn’t enough to convince me something was amiss. Washing clothes was on the low end of the survival spectrum. “That ain’t no zombie, is it Talbot? It’s running way too fast.”

A hundred yards away and it was clearly fixated on us, still no friendly wave, no gesture of peace, nothing but determination were etched in his/its ashen features. My mind was made up. “BT tell everyone to get back to the truck and ready to leave.” He didn’t move. I stomped on his foot, I thought he was going to punch me on the top of the head. “BT!” I yelled “Get everyone back in the truck.” He was still debating about the punch. “NOW FUCKER!” He jumped. I was most likely going to pay for this later but it still felt like the right thing to do. BT kept looking over his shoulder as he ran back towards the tractor-trailer. Most of the survivors were outside the truck lounging, smoking cigarettes, getting some fresh air, eating, and even some of the baser necessities, pissing and crapping. But when a giant black man is screaming at the top of his lungs in a post apocalyptic world, that you need to get your skinny asses back on the truck to save yourselves, you tend to listen.

Twenty-five feet away, I waited until I was one hundred percent sure and still I wasn’t. It didn’t seem like a zombie, but if he was human once, he no longer suffered from that affliction, not anymore.

“Now Dad?” Travis asked with a note of trepidation in his voice.

“Aw shit!” I just wasn’t convinced. I couldn’t even begin to wrap my mind around this new development. The guy was within spitting distance, sure Olympic class spitting distance, but you get the point, when clearly Travis had made up his mind. The Mossberg bellowed a triumphant roar. The 12 gauge slug caught the man square in the chest. The effect was devastating. I watched in fascinated slow motion as his chest cavity became fully exposed and blood rained rampant as his full speed sprint was halted in mid stride. The 1500 feet per second slug struck with enough force to blow the man back four feet. I hoped for both mine and Travis’ sanity that when we checked the body that there would be some tell tale sign of a humanity lost. The smoke from the shotgun barrel had barely begun to dissipate when we obtained our definitive answer. Mr. Speedy Sneakers (the name seemed appropriate at the time) started to arise without so much as a grunt or a groan or ‘Dude why the hell did you shoot me?’ At this point you really didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the rules to our deadly game had just been altered drastically, and we hadn’t received the revisions. Travis looked over at me, apprehension contorted his features. I understood his fear, this guy just looked too normal, sure his clothes looked like shit, but we don’t go shooting people because they have crappy clothes. If that was the case, we would have eradicated bums and high fashion models years ago. His countenance was pale but more in a sickly way than a deathly one. Hell, Justin, still suffering the effects of his zombie scratch, had worse color than this guy. Still lost in fluctuation, my enigma had completely sat up. Ignoring the silver dollar sized blast in his chest, he was trying in vain to get his feet up under him. The brain is a powerful tool but apparently it has its limitations, this poor bastard’s spinal column was shattered into at least a half dozen pieces, no amount of function rerouting was going to get him back up. Travis and I watched in horror as our mystery guest rolled himself over and began to military crawl his way over towards us. A few more seconds of our indecision and Speedy Sneakers was going to make it to his final destination, our flesh.