Mark Tufo - A Plague Upon Your Family

We didn’t have long to wait as the first thump of a thwarted zombie hit the front door. The sound was not as loud as it should have been in the quiet house. Mostly because the zombie that walked into the frame of the door was probably only a girl of seven. An involuntary tremor of revulsion coursed through me. It was an instinctual response. I could no more control it than the weather. The thumping began to pick-up frequency and intensity as if who ever had been holding the invisible leashes had let go.

Dust from the floorboards above our heads showered down upon us as the house began to vibrate under the assault.

“You should get some Prell.” BT said. “It might help with that bad case of dandruff you’ve got going on Talbot.”

“Prell! Prell? How fucking old are you BT? They don’t even make Prell anymore.”

“Sure they do I bought some the da...”

“Stop it you two! Don’t you realize what is going on?”

I did it, I don’t know why but I did it. “No, what?” That set her off. She went on and on about being in the midst of some sort of apocalypse or such. I kind of lost the train of her rant.

“Stop it you two, just stop it!” Jen looked up from BT’s chest, her face looked like she had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. And not the soft, brain addled Mike Tyson but the lean mean ear biting machine.

The house was shaking on its foundation as the zombies closed in from all sides. I didn’t even want to think about the children that were pressed up against the walls. An explosion of glass tinkled to the ground in first one and then two and then a dozen different locations. This was followed almost immediately by the crashing open of what sounded like the backdoor, at least by the location of the many footfalls now above our heads. The front door lasted the longest but ultimately could not withstand the assault. Zombies had breached our meager defenses. The floorboards above us creaked and protested against the strain of so much weight.

Zombies rushed in to fill every void within the house looking for tasty treats. Furniture splintered and knick-knacks were ground to dust under so many feet. I waited as long as I could, allowing as many as the enemy as I could into the house. It wouldn’t be a fraction of the number it needed to be but my options were rapidly becoming diminished. Someone had smelled our hiding spot and zombies began to bump up against the cellar door. It was reinforced with two by fours that I had nailed across it but they wouldn’t hold forever. Although I was more concerned at this point with the ceiling over our heads giving out first. There was a noticeable bow to it.

“You two ready?” I asked as I stood up, grabbing the road flare from the cabinet next to me.

Jen extracted herself from BT and did her best to gingerly help BT to stand. I noticed as he shifted his weight around, he was being especially careful not to put any weight on his injured leg. He half hopped over to where I was and leaned against the cabinet. Jen had walked over to the bottom of the staircase, nervously looking up at the basement door as if expecting it to open.

BT leaned in to make sure Jen couldn’t hear but unless she had a bionic ear, that wasn’t going to be a problem. The general melee free-for-all up stairs made the simple act of thinking a difficult proposition.

“I can’t run, Mike.”

I knew he was serious. He called me by my first name. “Figured as much, what’s your idea?”

He looked candidly at me.

“Come on man, you wouldn’t have shuffled over here and tried to be all sneaky if you didn’t have some shitty idea.”

Jen involuntarily jumped when the door took a particularly savage blow.

BT looked nervously over at Jen before he began to speak. “I was thinking I’d stay behind and watch your backs.”

I took my pointer finger and thumb and grabbed my chin like I was really contemplating something deep. “Can’t do it BT.”

He looked incredulously at me. “What do you mean, Mike? You gonna carry me? Maybe buck ten Jen over there could heft me on her shoulders.”

Jen looked over. “What’s going on?” She asked as she crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed her arms, possibly to wipe the chill of death from herself.

“Oh BT thinks we should leave him behind when we leave.”

“What? Is he fucking nuts?” Jen yelled.

“That’s what I thought. So I basically told him no.”

“Guys I’m right here.” BT said lamentably.

“And what did he say when you told him that?” Jen asked.

“Oh well he got all indignant. And then he was berating me about being able to carry his extra large ass, and that maybe you’d be able to.”

“Mike, I’m right here!” BT shouted.

“So you told him that there was no way in hell that we were leaving him behind?” She asked.

“Well we hadn’t got that far, but those would have been my next words. And then he would have replied with something heroic like ‘You guys could save yourselves. If you try to help me then we’ll all die.’ And I would have came back with something equally heroic like ‘Either we all get out of here alive or none of us do.'”

“I get it guys.” BT said. “We knew this was a one way trip anyway.”

Jen gripped herself tighter. “Wow just got a chill. Someone must have just walked over my grave.”

I laughed my ass off. We all did. “That’s hilarious because well, because…” And I pointed to the ceiling with the shuffling of hundreds of feet was going on.

“You must be psychic.” BT added. And we started laughing all over again, like the crazed doomed souls that we were.

Jen's tears of joy, slowly but inevitably turned to real tears. BT went over to comfort her.

“Now seems as good a time as any.” I lit the flare and walked over to the far corner of the basement where I had previously drilled a silver dollar sized hole through the kitchen floor and into the basement. I had drilled the hole through a cabinet in the kitchen thus avoiding any chance the hole would be plugged by someone standing on it or by knocking over the large container of gas that was next to it. I looked at the flare for a few seconds more, letting the brilliant fire burn its final images into my memories.

This fire represented the end of so many things, and hopefully the beginning of a new safer life for my family. “I wish you were here to enjoy this with me Eliza,” I muttered as I thrust the flare up and through the hole. The flame flashed brilliantly as it came in contact with the gaseous vapors. I crinkled my nose as the smell of burnt arm hair wafted up. If I found this smell offensive, it was a vale of roses on a warm spring day after a brief rain shower compared to what assaulted my olfactory senses next. The smell of zombies can be topped by only one other smell, that of burning zombies. Roasting on an open pit was preferable to the cloying stink of melting decayed flesh that ran rampant through the farmhouse.

There were no screams of mercy coming from upstairs. No shrieks of terror or pain only the mindless hunt for food. There was no mass exodus from the premises. We knew this by the unrelenting assailment on the basement door. Would the door give before the floor? Or would we succumb to smoke inhalation, death by breathing in the dead. Oh just fucking gross.

“You guys ready?” I asked again.

“Let’s give this a shot.” BT said making sure his rifle was fully loaded.

Jen didn’t say anything but thankfully she picked up her HK, popped in a new magazine and nodded to me. We three stood for a moment side by side looking at the door that led to the bulkhead. Long moments passed. Realizing your death is imminent is one thing. Rushing headlong into it is completely another matter. The basement door cracked or it may have been a floor joist.